D.A. Powell is an experimental poet best known for his trilogy — Tea, Cocktails, and Chronic — about the AIDS epidemic. His most recent book is Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (2012).
 

"by the open air, I swore out my list of pleasures:

sprig of lilac, scent of pine

the sparrows bathing in the drainage ditch, their song

 

the lusty thoughts in spring as the yellow violets bloom

              and the cherry forms its first full buds

the tonic cords along the legs and arms of youth

              and youth passing into maturity, ripening its flesh

growing softer, less unattainable, ruddy and spotted plum

 

daily, I mistake—there was a medication I forgot to take

there was a man who gave himself, decently, to me & I refused him

 

in a protracted stillness, I saw that heron I didn’t wish to disturb

was clearly a white sack caught in the redbud’s limbs

 

I did not comprehend desire as a deadly force until—

              daylight, don’t leave me now, I haven’t done with you—

                            nor that, in this late hour, we still cannot make peace"

 

— from Chronic