A Regret

A Regret

by David Trinidad

Kurt, early

twenties. Met

him after

an AA

meeting in

Silverlake

(November,

eighty-five).

I remem-

ber standing

with him up-

stairs, in the

clubhouse, how

I checked his

body out.

But not who

approached whom.

Or what we

talked about

before we

leaned against

my car and

kissed, under

that tarnished

L.A. moon.

Drove to my

place and un-

dressed him in

the dark. He

was smaller

than me. I

couldn't keep

my hands off

his ass. Next

morning, smoked

till he woke,

took him back.

He thanked me

sweetly. I

couldn't have

said what I

wanted, though

must have known.

Drove home and

put him in

a poem

("November")

I was at

the end of.

Later that

day it rained

(I know from

the poem).

David Trinidad was born in Los Angeles, was raised in the San Fernando Valley, and moved to New York City in 1988. Much of his work investigates the cultural landscapes of America's great metropolises, as well as the culture at large. His poems are often filled with references to television, movies, and music, while also being populated by very real people and problems. The autobiographical impulse in poets such as Anne Sexton, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, and James Schuyler can also be seen in Trinidad's work, as can masterful threads of both elegy and celebration.

Trinidad is known for his use of popular culture in his poems. The poet James Schuyler wrote, "Trinidad turns the paste jewels of pop art into the real thing." His work is also associated with the innovative formalism of the New York School. Alice Notley has written, "There is an unwavering light in all of Trinidad's work that turns individual words into objects, new facts." About The Late Show (2007), the New York Times Book Review wrote that Trinidad's "most impressive gift is an ability to dignify the dross of American life, to honor both the shrink-wrapped sentiment of the cultural artifacts he writes about and his own much more complicated emotional response to them."

Trinidad has also edited an anthology of collaborative poetry, the selected poems of Tim Dlugos and of Ann Stanford, and the journal Court Green, published out of Columbia College, where he teaches. He has also taught at Princeton, The New School, Rutgers, and Columbia.