Tim Dlugos, “After a Line by Ted Berrigan”
Author: Poetry Editor
June 13, 2012
From this year’s winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos edited by David Trinidad (Nightboat Books).
AFTER A LINE BY TED BERRIGAN
I want Pepsi for breakfast
every day. Every time I look
out the window I want to see
Sheridan Square. The lights
have to be just right.
I want to look as good as
Carroll (Jim), and write as good as
Berrigan (Ted). I want to seem
gentle and wear leather clothes.
The things you might suppose
I want, I probably don’t:
for instance, dope. I can be
totally carried away by a face
in the city, a line in a poem:
the moment at my parents’ home,
for instance, when I saw that
phrase again and sat up, straight.
“I have been in bed,” I said, “in
my lover’s underwear long enough!
I want to be feminine, marvelous, and tough!”
“After a Line by Ted Berrigan” from A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos ed. by David Trinidad. Copyright © 2011 by Tim Dlugos. Gratefully reprinted with the permission of Nightboat Books.
