Cocktails Poems

by Powell, D. A.

• ISBN13: 9781555973957
• ISBN10: 1555973957
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: Graywolf Press

Summary

kids everywhere are called to supper: it's late it's dark and you're all played out. you want to go home no rule is left to this game. playmates scatter like breaking glass they return to smear the ______. and you're it --from "[you'd want to go to the reunion: see]" InCocktails, D. A. Powell closes his contemporaryDivine Comedywith poems of sharp wit and graceful eloquence born of the AIDS pandemic. These poems, both harrowing and beautiful, strive toward redemption and light within the transformative and often conflicting worlds of the cocktail lounge, the cinema, and the Gospels.

Author Biography

D. A. Powell is the author of Tea and Lunch. He is Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Mixology
[the cocktail hour finally arrives: whether ending a day at the office]	3	(1)
[this is what you love: more people. you remember]	4	(1)
[he would care for me as a stranger: courtesy clerk. so quick]	5	(1)
[writing for a young man on the redline train: "to his boy mistress"]	6	(2)
[in the elegant days of downtown: we sunned on the porch]	8	(1)
[gardenhose dilated with rain: a puff adder]	9	(2)
[winter moon summer moon budding moon barley moon]	11	(1)
[a happiest harbinger to you: here spring]	12	(1)
[chapt. ex ex ex eye vee: in which scott has a birthday]	13	(1)
[dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash]	14	(1)
[12-line poem, seemingly out of place]	15	(1)
[the mind of moss: sitting here by the reflecting pool]	16	(1)
[when you touch down upon this earth. little reindeers]	17	(1)
[this little treatment has side effects: side effects]	18	(1)
[hope you like this new doctor: rachel says in hopeful tones]	19	(1)
[my lover my phlebotomist. his elastic fingers encircle my arm]	20	(3)
Filmography
[robe and pajamas, steadfast and softer than anyone who touched me]	23	(1)
[a mule-drawn scraper packed this earth: levees]	24	(1)
[19 lines]	25	(1)
[I was a priapic boy: the prow of a galleon]	26	(1)
[a boy at 15 can't be too tough: approximate masculinity]	27	(1)
[every man needs a buddy. who'll do]	28	(2)
[college roommate gone: his hamper full. I'll do us both a favor]	30	(1)
[the man in the front row: uniformed. ugly as my father the disillusioned]	31	(2)
[morning broke on my cabin inverted. tempest in my forehead]	33	(2)
[fortune drives a finned convertible: her blond wig shifts in the wind]	35	(1)
[you'd want to go to the reunion: see]	36	(2)
[so the theatre dimmed and reclined. cramped balcony rubbed against my leg]	38	(2)
[the atrium of the heart beckons with pendulous lips]	40	(3)
Bibliography
[my lot to spin the purple: that the tabernacle should be made]	43	(3)
[unsheathed the sword and cut the veil. visible the planet red]	46	(1)
[he tastes the air with his tongue. his eyes a gory killing]	47	(2)
[my riches I have squandered. spread with honey]	49	(1)
[strange flower in my hands. porphyry shell. clipped wool]	50	(1)
[they hear the clapping of the bell and are afraid]	51	(1)
[torch to the stubble of the fields: the harvest has ended]	52	(1)
[slightly foetid. foetal and stooped. an afterbirth of rags]	53	(1)
[the heavenly noise of domesticity murmurs in the kitchen: clink]	54	(1)
[not a waking mutter. the locusts in cessation]	55	(1)
[because I were ready before destruction. bearing the sign of his affliction]	56	(1)
[listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying]	57	(1)
[the ice hadn't cracked. stingy ground: frozen with its hoard of bulbs]	58	(2)
[A Kou omega]	60	(1)
[came a voice in my gullet: rise up and feast. thunderous]	61	(1)
[when he comes he is neither sun nor shade: a china doll]	62	(3)
[coda & discography]	65