Gay Men’s Health Project

Slinking past the ill-trained guard,
I felt sickly when he roared:

You here for gay test result?

Perhaps a friend
or lover could have given me
their hand as I descended
a tight corridor
to a room filled with sterilized
air and boy-faced men
bent over old Corpo school chairs,
their added weight
pinning loose lino to the floor,
its blistered skin chafed
by infectious foot-tapping.

Here, we’re schoolboys
stripped to our underwears
as a Health Board nurse fingers
paperwork, then asks:

Who’s next?

David Clarke was born in London and raised in Dublin. He is completing a BA in English, Media and Cultural Studies at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology.