David Trinidad

Bewitched the boys were out in force Drunken- ness and lust —and full moon bouncing back and forth that black above the bars * Last night it burned cigarette tip thru old blanket hole-punched gray paper sky Tonight it outright blinded One headlight or drive-in sci-fi eye * I’ve been alone long enough Even the moon wears a ring and is full

The night reduced to a siren, a sigh: Beautiful boy on the treadmill Glimpsed sweating through sweating glass— My new moon. Sylvia’s moon: a smiling skull Snagged in witchy branches; fossil Brushed free of blackest earth. My last moon: an orange ball at rest, for an instant, On the grey lake. Wish list: dining set and dresser, Boombox, thin black tie, boy- Friend à la Madonna’s “True Blue” La la la la la la la Your moon (tonight): a clouded X-ray. I stand at a corner and stare up, Both of us astonished By its own secret light.

came in a pink, orange and white striped metal tube, with a black curlicue border and a splayed gold base.   It came in any number of mod shades: Nippy Beige, Chelsea Pink, Poppycock, Hot Nec- taringo, Pinkadilly, Dicey Peach.   There were several tubes in my mother’s makeup drawer in the bath- room five out of six of us used (my father had his own bathroom, as forbidden as the walk-in closet where his Playboys were hidden under a stack of sweaters on the top shelf).   All the girls at school had Slicker in their purses; I watched them apply The London Look at the beginning and end of each class.   I marveled at what else spilled out: compact, mascara brush, eye shadow, wallet, troll doll, dyed rabbit’s foot, chewing gum, tampon, pink plastic comb.   At home I stared at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror and, as my brother pounded on the locked bath- room door, twisted a tube and rubbed, ever so slightly, Slicker on my lips.

Kurt, early twenties. Met him after an AA meeting in Silverlake (November, eighty-five). I remem- ber standing with him up- stairs, in the clubhouse, how I checked his body out. But not who approached whom. Or what we talked about before we leaned against my car and kissed, under that tarnished L.A. moon. Drove to my place and un- dressed him in the dark. He was smaller than me. I couldn’t keep my hands off his ass. Next morning, smoked till he woke, took him back. He thanked me sweetly. I couldn’t have said what I wanted, though must have known. Drove home and put him in a poem ("November") I was at the end of. Later that day it rained (I know from the poem).

Depressed because my book wasn’t nominated for a gay award, I lie on my couch watching—not listening to— the O.J. trial. Byron, who senses something’s wrong, hides under the bed until Ira comes home, carrying a bouquet of beautifully wrapped tulips. I press the mute button. “This is your prize,” he says. “Guess what they’re called.” A smile in- voluntarily overcomes my frown. “What?” “Red Parade.” “That sounds like the name of an old Barbie outfit,” I say. “That’s exactly what I told the florist. And you know what she told me?” “What?” “When she was a girl, she turned her Barbie into Cleopatra: gave her an Egyptian haircut and painted her nipples blue.” “How cool.” “Yeah, but now she thinks that her doll would be worth eight hundred dollars if she hadn’t messed it up.” Once in water, the tulips begin to unclench— ten angry fists. Their colors are fierce, like Plath’s “great African cat,” her “bowl of red blooms.” Poor Sylvia, who so desperately wanted awards, and only won them after she was dead. Byron jumps up, Ira sits down and massages my feet. “You guys.” My spirits are lifted by their tulips, kisses, licks.

Rachel Sherwood 1954-1979 "What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?" —Erich Segal, Love Story The first time we talked was in the rooftop cafeteria at Cal State Northridge. Misplaced poets, we sat amidst a crop of clean-cut freshmen while, round the college, smog-smudged San Fernando Valley beckoned, panoramic and bland. I’d just returned from my debauched year up north—sad, drunken sex at the baths, in dark parks. You still yearned for St. David’s, your stint as a foreign exchange student. In Wales, something fearless woke you up: you drank, wrote, fucked. Now, stuck in the suburbs, we talked poets, punk rock. This was the late seventies, disco’s zenith. We both wanted to look like Patti Smith. We both wanted to look like Patti Smith on her Horses album: disheveled, pale, thin, intense. You were scanning Meredith’s “Modern Love” for British Lit. I thought stale anyone before Sexton. You laughed, threw back your head. I puffed a Marlboro Light. In truth, you were too hearty, and I too uptight, to do punk. I praised, as twilight dimmed the gray valley, a poem you’d read at the student reading: a pitcher cracks, foreshadows a car crash. The skyline bled behind you. I’d also read that night—racked with stage fright, trembling uncontrollably. You seemed at ease, more confident than me. You seemed at ease, more confident than me, more independent. Lived on Amigo Avenue with a roommate, a moody science major; and your alter ego, a tomcat named Baby Tubbs. Still at home, I had no wheels. You drove a battered white hatchback full of newspapers, beer cans, comb, brush, books—half wastebasket, half purse. One night early on, we split a fifth of scotch, spread your tarot cards on the living room floor. You predicted long life for me, then said of yourself: “I might make twenty-five.” Your roommate walked by, shot a look. Later, I passed out beneath Lord Byron’s watchful eye. Passed out beneath Lord Byron’s watchful eye— the poster tacked above your secondhand couch—I dreamt I was falling down the side of a mountain, a scarecrow, twisted and limp, limbs ripped, bouncing from rock to rock. On every wall an idol: Toulouse-Lautrec cancan in kitchen, young Chatterton’s wan figure over your desk. Shuffling the deck, you asked the same question, drew the same black card: Death. Together we consulted all your oracles: Ouija board, zodiac, I Ching, palm, a fickle Magic 8 Ball. Hoping for more time, you inquired, believed like a convict praying for a reprieve. Like a convict praying for a reprieve, you were more alive than the complacent suburbanites I despised. Drunk and peeved at the world, I started an argument that ended with you hurling a full Coors at me as I fumed down your stairs. Four weeks passed before we spoke, a rift I endured by writing a poem about the freak- ish night a black cloud followed us—we lit candles, toasted oblivion. Battle scarred, we entered the undergraduate poetry contest at Northridge. Daniel Halpern guest judged...or was it May Swenson? After your death, I’d be happy you won. What can you say about a twenty-five- year-old girl who died? That as a child she loved horses. And dogs. And cats. That Monty Python made her laugh. That she was alive to the disruptions of her time. That she liked Byron, Rod Stewart, Mozart, Waugh, Poe, Keats, the Cars. That she lived on Amigo and was my friend. That she once threw her keys in anger; once threw a New Yorker, shout- ing “I hate John Ashbery!” And that she once, after a speed- and scotch-fueled orgy— Some Girls blasting, her last boyfriend passed out beside us—straddled, rode me like a horse. Rachel, can I say this: your cunt felt coarse. After your death, I’d be happy you won the contest—at least you had that. “Don’t turn on me,” you pleaded. Losing wasn’t fun, but I couldn’t begrudge you your prize. Burned out from an abortion, a vicious bite— a German shepherd lunged at your nose, slit its tip—and a violent unrequit- ed affair with your “Don J,” a closet case obsessed with Kerouac, you spoke of making a change. By then it was summer: Blondie on the car radio, Fourth of July, craving fireworks. I remember headlights; reaching for the steering wheel, you. Next thing I knew, I woke in ICU. Next thing I knew, I woke in ICU: machines beeping around me, doctors and nurses hovering in an eerie blue light. Tube down my throat, I scrawled, with bruised hand, your name, question mark. My sister was steered in, wept to tell you were dead. The night they moved me to a private room, you appeared, pulsating white presence, in the hallway outside my door. “I’m all right,” you said, “You don’t have to worry about me.” I’d lie there in traction for six weeks, almost two decades ago, a ghost that fell from my own scarecrow dream, numb to that deadly drop. The first time we talked was on a rooftop.

The streets of San Francisco are littered with bodies of bank robbers & mobsters prostitutes & pimps Bullet holes in foreheads Clothes covered with that fake orange blood they used in the seventies Just pretend dead No sirens (those will be dubbed in later) Camera pans an immaculate city Mid-morning weekday only a few tourists about (everyone else is at work) Light traffic on bridges Newly erected Pyramid dominates the scene Sky Maya blue perpetually wiped clean by low-flying clouds Come nightfall even the junkies in the Haight & strippers in North Beach will have a kind of innocence Just extras on the set As close to Utopia as you could get in 1973 & now only attainable in a Dirty Harry movie

I went to his sixty-sixth birthday dinner: sixteen years ago this past November. I remember that it was at Chelsea Central (his favorite restaurant: great steaks) on 10th Avenue, and that Ashbery was there, and a few others, including Joe, impeccably dressed and gracious, who picked up what must have been (I thought at the time) an exorbitant bill. I remember him saying more than once, “Joe always picks up the bill,” then smiling a slightly wicked smile. Sitting with him (those excruciating silences!) in his room at the Chelsea, my eyes would wander from his book- shelves (The Portrait of a Lady stood out) to the pan of water on the radiator to the records strewn on the floor to some scraggly plants (ivy? herbs?) in ceramic pots at the base of the French doors that opened to the balcony and balustrade and sound of traffic on 23rd Street six floors below. He read me “White Boat, Blue Boat” shortly after he wrote it, and a poem about Brook Benton singing “Rainy Night in Georgia” that didn’t make it into his Last Poems, though I remember thinking it beautiful. He complained, in a letter to Tom, about how much I smoked, and how emotional I’d get during movies: he must have been referring to Field of Dreams(he had a yen for Kevin Costner). When he took me to see L'Atalante, a film he loved, I was bored. Once, we took the subway (he hadn’t ridden it in years) to the Frick; I remember admiring Romney’s Lady Hamilton. It hurt that he didn’t invite me to the dinner after his Dia reading or to the reception after his reading at the 92nd Street Y, though he did, at the latter, read “Mood Indigo,” dedicated to me. When he said my name from the stage, Joan and Eileen, sitting to my left, turned and stared at me; frozen by the enormity of the moment, I couldn’t look back. When he came to a reading I gave at St. Mark’s, Raymond impressed upon me what an honor it was: Jimmy didn’t go to many poetry readings. What else is there to say? That when I visited him at St. Vincent’s the day before he died Darragh said, “He likes to hear gossip.” So I said, “Eileen and I are talking again.” That at his funeral I sat alone (Ira couldn’t come); that that was the loneliest feeling in the world. That afterwards Doug said “You look so sad.” How should I have looked, Doug! And that a year after he died, I dreamt I saw him in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel. He was wearing a hospital shift and seemed to have no muscle control over his face—like in inten- sive care after his stroke. He saw me and said, “It’s nice to see some familiar faces.” I approached him, but he disappeared.

Pink Dawn, Aurora Pink, Misty Pink, Fresh Pink, Natural Pink, Country Pink, Dusty Pink, Pussywillow Pink, Pink Heather, Pink Peony, Sunflower Pink, Plum Pink, Peach of a Pink, Raspberry Pink, Watermelon Pink, Pink Lemonade, Bikini Pink, Buoy Buoy Pink, Sea Shell Pink, Pebble Pink, Pink Piper, Acapulco Pink, Tahiti Beach Pink, Sunny Pink, Hot Pink, Sizzling Pink, Skinnydip Pink, Flesh Pink, Transparent Pink, Breezy Pink, Sheer Shiver Pink, Polar Bare Pink, Pink Frost, Frosty Pink, Frost Me Pink, Frosted Pink, Sugarpuff Pink, Ice Cream Pink, Lickety Pink, Pink Melba, Pink Whip, Pinkermint, Sweet Young Pink, Little Girl Pink, Fragile Pink, Fainting Pink, Helpless Pink, Tiny Timid Pink, Wink of Pink, Shadow of Pink, Tint of Pink, Shimmer of Pink, Flicker of Pink, Pink Flash, E.S. Pink, Person-to-Person Pink, City Pink, Penny Lane Pink, Pink Paisley, London Luv Pink, Pretty Pink, Pastel Pink, Pinking Sheer, Pink Piqué, Pink Silk, Plush Pink, Lush Iced Pink, Brandied Pink, Sheer Pink Champagne, Candlelight Pink, Fluffy Moth Pink, Softsilver Pink, Pinkyring, Turn Pale Pink, A Little Pink, Pinker, Pinkety Pink, Heart of Pink, Hug that Pink, Passionate Pink, Snuggle Pink, Pink-Glo!, Happy-Go-Pink, Daredevil Pink, By Jupiter Pink, Stark Raving Pink, Viva La Pink.

When you grow up, what will you do? Please come to my tea party. I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you? Let’s take a trip to the zoo. Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee. You’re silly! When you grow up, what will you do? One plus one equals two. It’s fun to learn your ABC’s. I’m Chatty Cathy, who are you? Please come help me tie my shoe. Can you come out and play with me? When you grow up, what will you do? The rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo. Please read me a bedtime story. I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you? Our flag is red, white and blue. Let’s makebelieve you’re Mommy. When you grow up, what will you do? I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you?