Dennis Rhodes
1987
On the morning my neighbor Greg died
it was dreadfully clear that AIDS
had hit home. 1987 was
the year. I treasured my status
as VP of a large PR firm:
handsome, self-important, aware
of everything and everyone
around me. I lived in a grand
closet, wore thousand dollar suits,
adored my brownstone apartment
on the Upper West Side. I did
not actually like my neighbors. I found them
aloof, reasonably friendly.
And that was that. Their door was
open as I left for work. Bob
said simply “Dennis, Greg is gone.”
At that moment, I stopped fooling
myself: I’d never been tested
because I lived as if I were
immortal. I wore a Rolex—
I remember getting the news
about Greg at ten after eight.
I knew I could not deceive myself
any longer. That afternoon
I went to my doctor. I got
my results seven days later.
I couldn’t wait to get into
jeans and a tee-shirt, and go to
the gym. I was suddenly changed
into a normal person. Death
knocked on the door right next to mine—
never got that close to me again.
Dennis Rhodes is the author of Spiritus Pizza & Other Poems (Vital Links, 2000) and Entering Dennis (Xlibris, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared in BLOOM, Chelsea Station, Lambda Literary Review, The Cape Cod Times, New York Newsday, Fine Gardening, Avocet, Backstreet, Ibbetson Street, bear creek haiku, Aurorean, and Alembic, among others. Rhodes served as literary editor of Body Positive magazine (an important source of information for people living with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 90s) and later as poetry editor of Provincetown Magazine. He co-founded the Provincetown Poetry Festival and ran it from 1999–2001. For a number of years, Rhodes hosted a radio program on WOMR in Provincetown, featuring interviews and poetry readings with a different Provincetown or Cape Cod poet every week.
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