(photo by Dan Vera, Beltway Poetry Quarterly)
Washington, D.C.
Tim Dlugos apartment
1437 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Gay poet and activist Tim Dlugos (1950-1990) lived at this address as a young man, while working for Ralph Nader’s organization, Public Citizen. Raised Catholic in Arlington, Va., Dlugos joined the Christian Brothers as a teenager, but left the order and came out as gay in 1971.
While Dlugos was living in Washington, he was an active member of Mass Transit, a peer poetry workshop that convened weekly at the Community Book Shop in Dupont Circle. Mass Transit started a publishing venture called Some of Us Press, which published Dlugos’ first poetry collection, High There, in 1973.
In the late ’70s, Dlugos moved to New York City, where he edited the St. Mark’s Poetry Project newsletter and was a contributing editor of Christopher Street magazine. He published his own work widely, in magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks. His poem “G-9,” an account of his time in an AIDS ward, appeared posthumously in The Paris Review.
When he died in December 1990, Dlugos was enrolled in graduate studies at Yale Divinity School, with the intention of becoming an Episcopal priest. Poet David Trinidad is currently compiling Dlugos’ collected poems for publication.
My list of daily intercessions
is as long as a Russian
novel. I pray about AIDS
last. Last week I made a list
of all my friends who’ve died
or who are living and infected.
Every day since, I’ve remembered
someone I forgot to list.–from “G-9,” by Tim Dlugos
The Queerest Places 
You must be logged in to post a comment.