Hand Over Heart: Poems 1981-1988

More diarist than poet, Trinidad jots down his daily--and nightly--doings in journal-like fashion. In the long ``November,'' we are made privy to his goings-on with various companions throughout a whole month: ``Friday evening, / Christopher, / Joe and I lis- / ten to Televi - / sion's Greatest / Hits . . . as we primp / in front of / the full-length / mirror in / Christopher's / bedroom.'' Trinidad ( Pavane ) also devotes poems to his favorite girl groups and to television shows he watched as a kid. Occasionally, he gets a little more personal. Apparently brokenhearted from a recent breakup, Trinidad wonders, naively, what went wrong: `` Was it / love? I thought / it was love. I mean / it felt like love .'' That the poet projects such misplaced, childlike importance onto the mostly insignificant details of his life is not the most surprising aspect of this poetry. More astonishing, particularly to gays among his audience, is that Trinidad, a homosexual, appears unaffected by AIDS. Safe sex is mentioned once or twice, but other than that, Trinidad seems to have cruised through the '80s without giving the virus and its assault on the gay community a second thought. (May)