The following poems are from Sugar.

Solider of the Past

Back from the army, you fall
at my feet, the ones you kissed

once with a burgundy tongue.
“ Back in my arms,” you say,

“Back on the same road, too.”
And you’re right:

it is the same road,
same gravel-pocked bayou road

where you left me
where you’ve come back,

ten years late in a pick-up
black with stickers and decals.

The same road where twice
you slammed into deer

one buck, one doe,
then turned to me with crimson eyes.

You pin me down, rifle under my chin,
rifle between my legs.

“I’ve missed this,” you say,
still talking between quotes,

ramming yourself into me still,
taking aimless shots.

You’ll never reach me; I know that now.
The road ends soon

and there’s a bus. Hear your dog tags
jingle, that old song?

 

Shhh

We don’t want anyone
to hear American Lit’s

Best Kept Secret. All of its best
writers are not white

not straight, not male.
All of its best writers

don’t lie. They crack
secrets open like eggs.

Shhh. If you listen
you can hear them fry.

 

DECALOGUE
(’85-’95)

I.

The test had been handled by a plasma donor center, where I went under the needle twice a week in exchange for extra cash for all the booze and tabs of acid that fueled my early college days. One day I walked in for my usual “donation,” but the nurse gave me the fish-eye then looked at my folder with alarm, and I thought, Good Lord, they found out I’m diabetic. I thought, Holy shit, they found LSD in my blood. I thought, Sweet Jesus, they found out I’m gay—maybe the black tights, tuxedo jacket, and twenty-four-inch pearls gave me away.

II.

Besides, I was gay, wasn’t I? So the test results were no surprise. All kinds of terrible afflictions had been promised me. I was supposed to catch AIDS; it was part of the plan, the price I had to pay. My father had said that AIDS was God’s revenge, that my being gay was like shooting myself in the foot, that homosexuality was the same as murder or suicide in the eyes of the Lord. Hadn’t Mama warned me about eyes going blind and body parts falling off?

III.

While waiting for the second blood test, I OD’d at a three-keg pool party. My girlfriend had tired of my perpetual mid-party pass-outs, so she ordered me to do a handful of speed. I did two, then two more. Within an hour, I fell into a fit of convulsions, my eyes froze open, the pool party cleared, and two ambulances and a fire truck followed the final two rounds of speed. I was surrounded by men in uniform when I heard her say, “I have no idea what happened. We were just sitting here talking when he fell on the floor and started choking on his tongue.” She said it so casually; it was like she was describing a glass shaken off the counter by a mysterious vibration.

IV.

My parents each made the sign of the Cross when the therapist announced there was nothing wrong with me, nothing a few cures wouldn’t fix. I wasn’t gay, not really. It was an illusion or delusion, like the false positive of the HIV test. All I had to do was to stop wearing black eyeliner and rosary beads, to give up the tube skirts and tuxedo jackets. I had to read the sports pages and memorize game scores. Stop dying my hair magenta and listening to the Sisters of Mercy. Change your behavior, he said, and you change.

V.

When I reached San Francisco, I found the wild-eyed riot I had been looking for. First ACT-UP, then Queer Nation and an explosion of gay clubs in the SOMA warehouse district. Ecstasy and house music crashed down on the city like a white tidal wave. In the Gold Room at Colossus, a sea of hands rose to the ceiling over a crest of white crew-neck T-shirts. In the main room, a twenty-foot-high stack of speakers pumped out the crackling anthem of the moment. “Everybody’s free,” the song said. Then another threw down the challenge, “Are you ready to fly?”

VI.

I was fumbling through words, trying to describe how long it had been, how little I’d tried, when he put a finger to my lips and said that all my talk was turning him on. He wanted to take me home and show me everything. How to stroke and bite his nipple, how to lick the curve of his underarm. How to press the spot between his legs to delay an orgasm. How to put on a condom without losing the heat of the moment. How to enter him from behind, from the side, from on top. How to spread my own legs and rock under him. How to find a rhythm and how to hold it with a really long kiss. How to keep my eyes open and let my skin catch fire.

VII.

He had gotten high on smack and swallowed some guy’s come in the back of a bar. Instead of nodding sympathetically, I burst into a near-rage, “How could you?” I demanded, “How could you forget about everything you taught me?”

But when I saw his eyes sink back in his head, I forgot my fury and kissed him on the lips. “It’s all right,” I said, “Just be careful, baby. Be careful.” I really meant “Be safe.” Less than six months later, he tested positive for HIV and my heart sank. I had been too hard on him. I hadn’t said the right thing. I hadn’t saved him.

VIII.

A charge ran through my body as I thought, this is it, this is what all the excitement was about, this is what it feels like to fuck a guy without a condom. My legs and his legs locked together and my eyes shut down on a dream: I was in a tent near a bayou in Louisiana and I could hear water running nearby. I was safe, safe in a tent with a boy squirming under me. I put my lips to his mouth and let my tongue find its way inside. I rocked and thrust and eased my way in and out of him until he finally flipped me over and slipped inside. Afterwards, I felt nothing, only exhaustion and the curly edges of sleep.

IX.

A friend and I sat in an East Village bar as I told him what had happened. After I got through stammering and fidgeting, he let his sharp, but quiet gaze fall down on me. Eye to eye, we stayed still and silent until he raised his hand from the table and brought it hard and fast against my face. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he said, “Have you forgotten everything?”

X.

And I realized that I had. I had forgotten the scare of the false positive test, the feeling that I was going to die. I had forgotten the marches and the banners and the sight of my roommate covered in lesions. I had forgotten my friends who had already died, Bill and Kelly and Charlie and Jeff and Malcolm and Francis and Daniel and Chris and Roger and Clinton.

Ten years passed, a decade, and I’ve changed that little. Or maybe I’ve changed so much that I’ve come full circle. I’ll have to get tested again, and again I’ll have to wait for the results. I’ll sit tracing my hands over my body looking for trouble spots. Listening for a hollow murmur, a dull echo. Staring in the mirror waiting to go blind. Plucking out an eye, a black pearl.

 

© 2005 Martin Pousson - Contributor's Bio

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