The Intimacy Issue

Matthew Lippman

First published in Salt Hill 26 (2010).

I want to be a fag in Provincetown
so I can walk the beach.

I want to be so gay
all my gayness makes me straight.

I want to wear pink shirts and tight shorts, own three poodles with white wings
and have a beau named Chuck. Maybe another
named Earl. Some of my friends will dress in drag.
Some of them will eat pork.
I want to be taller and skinnier
and have a stomach that is pimped hard
receding west.

If I were a gay man named Frank
I’d have a tattoo of Marilyn on my ass, a bottle of whiskey
under the bed. If I were a straight man named Herb
I’d slip my tongue inside her ass and pretend
it was a him.

I want to be a gay man with many children
and a straight man all alone. I have never wanted to be
sex change material.
Nothing against sex change material
but I believe this, for me, alone:
God gave me what God gave me.

I pleasure myself with chiffon and gin, construction hats and
cheese.
My gay friend Paul has a wall of porn.
Men on men
on beaches in pools. That’s not my thing.
My thing is silence.
I want to be a queen on Commercial
and listen to the surf.
If I can’t be that, I want to be an astronaut in space
floating upside down. No matter who you sleep with,
sleeping with them is being an astronaut in space
floating upside down.
The best part is when the helmet comes off. If you open your mouth,
you die. If you don’t open your mouth,
you die. But you are not dead.
You are happy
in bed
wrapped in the soft, white sheets
that feel like Egypt.

Matthew Lippman is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (Four Way Books, 2020), winner of the 2018 Levis Prize.