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PHALLIC SYMBOLS
BY CLETUS CROW
PIG ROAST PUBLISHING, 2025
69 pages, $9.99

I had been aware of a fellow called Cletus Crow on the indie circuit for some time, having read and enjoyed his poems in such mainstays as Hobart, Expat Press, Maudlin House, and was fascinated when I finally caught sight of his first missile launch: set to burn in 10, 9, 8 was a collection of poems completely devoted to the human penis, thanks to the venerable Pig Roast Publishing and the author’s own damned courage. I got even luckier when Cletus himself contacted me and asked if I would be interested in reading his hauruspices: 69 pages of verse devoted to the most infamous of human appendages, the penis.

At that time I did not know that Phallic Symbols was in fact an acolyte’s handbook to the cock, and that it was not. In my naivete I assumed that my first assumption would be an exaggeration, but it was not. This is definitely a collection of poems about the human penis, caveat emptor. Do not however throw out the baby with the bathwater, dear reader. There is so much poetry in this little collection, so many truly fiendish lines, and deftly subverted tropes, nods to both the Southern Baptist Jesus (halleluiah) and an America that is only ever barely intact at surface level, that it positively bulges. Yes I pun, but as one blurber on the jacket (Graham Irvin) says, ‘this is not just 60 dick jokes.’ I would go further and say that no one has ever talked about the human penis, that destroyer of worlds, that selector of nature, compass of love, damned if you do and damned if you do not, like this until now.

So what is this book like? It is both disgusting and hilarious, both trivial and profound. There are many poems in this collection I look forward to rereading, and others I never want to look at again. When I watch movies and two people, whatever two people of any kind, start smooching, I literally have to cover my eyes to prevent a powerful gag reflex. I truly hate sex in art, but also understand that that is my own reflex. Apparently people like to watch other people smooch! Sociopathically I also accept that other people must have sex amongst themselves. Mathematically it must be happening. God bless them. So perhaps Cletus chose the wrong guy to send a collection of poems to that includes a lot of gay sex, including a theoretical yet historic rearending on the Washington Monument, because for me a lot of these lines describing sex were just simply gross. Look kids, I am no longer fascinated by the insertion of appendages into holes, except on designated Wednesdays. But I read this book two times because the sex bothered me and about half of the poems were downright gutsy and I was thinking, how in the hell can I write a review about this for my baby, for my Gorko? And I realized that Cletus knows this too. He knows that the male mechanism required to achieve sexual pleasure is both perverse and beautiful, both active and passive, both romantic and nothing to do with love, both full of pride and full of shame.

Shame as a theme in this collection shines like a bright hickey, is one of the salient characteristics of this book, clearly written from the POV of a boy who grew up in a sexually repressive space, wanting more.

young me hoped to be a youth pastor
just to be a long-haired youth pastor
just to be jesus hot
another unattainable otter
wearing birkenstocks
perusing megachurch sound systems
–Phallic Symbols 34

What will daddy think of me when he finds out I am gay? This is what the author wants to know, how to please dad, how to fit in and maintain one’s dignity in a conservative southern US of A. In several of these poems he seems to give up and accept shame for his gayness, shame as the only option with this kind of rocket attached to his body.

There are poems in this collection that are so good they will bring tears to your eyes, and poems that are so pedestrian you will want to murder the author for giving up. We know after all that Cletus can spin lines to make you sing halleluiah, yet some of these feel to fall a bit short, like this was about 58 not 68 finished poems. Still, 58 good poems on a difficult…no, an impossible theme is quite an accomplishment. Well done, Cletus. Space is not the final frontier, it is in fact human biology.

I highly recommend this book and applaud Jeff at Pig Roast for another excellent acquisition. One poem to whet your stones is pasted below.

God Also Made…

your squirrel nest wig
post drag show

purple silhouette
passing out poppers

that man skeleton

–Phallic Symbols 57

Get it here: PHALLIC SYMBOLS

WHAT IS WE IS SERIES?

We Is Series is the new Gorko Club of Books Series of serious book reviews. We plan to review a new indie book a month, or per year, or maybe once a decade.

NO BUT WHAT IS IT

It is series, we are not joking around. The concept is to review new indie books, and to just give you the most honest impression we have got of them.

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