Carnival of Community

Carnival of Community is poem about small town Illinois, cult-shaped rules, queer survival, and the messy joy of building community through sports, glitter, and grit.

At the Kesha concert in Tampa this month with friends who remind me what glitter and community feel like.

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Carnival of Community

(a poem by Adam Rye)

I was born in a town so small
the Dairy Queen counted as culture,
a white-walled world of 4,400
where gossip grew faster than corn.

I learned early how to clap on cue,
how to raise my hands
like antennae catching heaven’s static.
Joined a pray-away-the-gay cult
that promised clarity
but handed me camouflage.

I got married,
to the right gender on paper,
the wrong script in practice.
Church taught me attraction was vanity,
desire was judgment,
so I played the role handed to me,
masking like a model in a borrowed catalog.

We packed our lives in boxes,
drove south until the streets
smelled of swamp boys’ salty sunscreen.
Florida was supposed to be
my fresh chapter,
my firework finale,
the glitter after the grit.

But autism makes a maze
out of other people’s mouths.
The world talks in riddles,
and I keep answering straight.
I lost the job that once made me proud,
fired for reasons
they could not say with a straight face.
Now four years later
I still have not found a paycheck
to match the old one,
just rumors, rejections,
and a Rolodex of first dates
that vanish before a third.

Still, I laced up.
Kickball, volleyball, cornhole,
lake cleanups and rollerblades,
I built a carnival of community.
Great friends,
sleepovers where people swore
I must be in love with them.
Even the cat I housesit
makes me feel more chosen
than most men on dating apps.

I have never been in debt
since 2016.
I can juggle bills,
but not ambition.
And sometimes ambition slips out sideways,
like a fart in yoga class,
loud and embarrassing
but proof there is still movement inside.

Back at the megachurch
I had microphones, cameras, lights,
a circus of creation.
Now my creativity
feels like a cassette tape
without a player.

I planned vacations,
filled out job apps,
hoped for interviews
that rarely came.
I still forget I am disabled,
forget AuDHD Adam needs scaffolding.
I try to do it all solo
until the spiral swallows me.

So yes, this makes sense.
I am still the boy from the cornfield cult,
still the husband who learned his lines
without knowing the play,
still the divorcee who thought
he could buy a house with hope.
But I am also the friend who shows up,
the volunteer in glitter shorts,
the man who keeps writing his resurrection
in rascally rhythmic music,
even when the world
tries to hand him silence instead of song.

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Spice Rack kickball crew in HotMess Sports, St. Pete. A dusty field full of sweat, sass, and the kind of diverse friendships that keep me showing up.

Backstory: Carnival of Community

This piece started with memory and metaphor braided together.

• Opening: The Dairy Queen and cornfields set the scene of a 4,400-person Illinois town where gossip was its own religion. That opening shows the smallness of the world I was born into.

• Cult and marriage: I joined a pray-away-the-gay church and married under its rules. It wasn’t about faking desire so much as following the script I was handed, trying to look “normal” in a world that kept telling me what attraction should mean.

• Florida move: Packing up and driving south is painted with “swamp boys’ salty sunscreen.” It’s a surreal, sensual, Florida detail that marks the start of my fresh chapter. This was supposed to be glitter after grit: my reset.

• Autism and work: The maze metaphor captures the constant miscommunication between my brain and the world’s riddles. Losing my job “for reasons they could not say with a straight face” speaks to the confusion and unfairness of that break. The four years of underemployment that followed left me spiraling.

• Community building: The heart of the poem lives here: kickball, volleyball, rollerblading, cornhole, cleanups, Girls Rock Camp. It’s a carnival of community, messy and vibrant. Even the cat I housesit becomes a symbol of chosen connection.

• Fart joke: Humor cuts the heaviness. “Ambition slips out sideways like a fart in yoga class” is a self-humbling line: a reminder that growth is awkward, noisy, and real.

• Creativity then and now: At the church I had lights, cameras, mics. Now it feels like having a cassette tape without a player. The longing for creative infrastructure shows how much I thrive with support and space.

• Closing: The final stanza ties the arc together. I am still that boy from the cornfield, the husband reading lines from someone else’s play, the gay divorcee who thought he could buy stability with hope. But I’m also the friend, the volunteer, the man writing his own resurrection in rascally rhythmic music, refusing silence.