Alex Gildzen

from TERRITORY OF MEN: Poems 1964-2004
MAKING LOVE WITH GHOSTS

that’s what the Chinese call it
Lucio sd in bed
the morning after
my sleepless nite

he wasn’t having sex
“even with women”
he sd when I carressd his back

I wonder if his morning observation
was because he heard me
when I thought
he’d fallen asleep

wd the Chinese scorn me
for making love to a ghost
breathing beside me

       1981

NITES NOT REMEMBERD BUT NOTCHD ON THE SOUL

1
in trucks at docks
mouths open to outlaws

2
paprika torso

3
on a beach a boy
drunk on coddling cider
moans at pain
of gulls in his loins
shreiking to escape

4
twins in uniforms

5
waking
        tied to a strange bed

incisura on the flank

        1984

SWIMMERS OUT OF WATER

a tyke astairing across the living room
decades before his first tux

        _____________________

                I still dance by myself

                or with an unwilling Tobias
                who unlike an earlier cat
                takes no pleasure in my recreation
                of Nureyev’s tango with Dowell

                the last time I remember
                dancing with another man
                was two years ago in a cellar
                off Via Veneto

                I was drunk again

        ________________________

(from a novel begun in 1977 & abandond in 1978)
The two fingers of gin in Boyd’s glass refracted the silver blue shimmer of the
revolving globe above the dance floor turning it into the hideous drink that had
been the Fire Island favorite a few seasons back. But the blue water didn’t last
as long as the song. Boyd steadied himself against the bar. It was the summer
of disco and young men dipped and dove across the slick floor like swimmers out
of water.

        _________________________

      he invitd me
      to a dance
      I didn’t know

      at an Akron bar
      near where Hart Crane
      sold chocolates

      the tyke taught
      to lead in school
      tried to follow

        ___________________________

        dancing with Jean-Claude at the Stonewall
                  Ned at the Firehouse
                    Jay at Studio One
                      Ira at 12 West
                        Gerald at the A House
                          Steven at Parade
                            Thomas at Les Jardins

        those 1001 nites we dancd & drank away
        I want back
                          & the boys who thrashd beside me
                          lost at sea

                          1986