Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Terrance Hayes’ "At Pegasus" is a poem of memory, desire, and transformation, set within the liminal space of a gay nightclub. The speaker moves through a world of shadow and sound, past and present, where memory and bodily presence intertwine in an experience that is at once disorienting and profoundly intimate. The poem operates on multiple levels, weaving together classical allusion, personal reminiscence, and the sensory intensity of the club into a meditation on masculinity, intimacy, and the ways in which bodies move through space and time.

From the outset, Hayes invokes Orpheus, the mythic poet who was torn apart by the frenzied Maenads when he refused to sing. This reference frames the nightclub as a kind of ecstatic ritual space, where music and movement take on a near-religious significance. The men grinding “in the strobe & black lights of Pegasus” are likened to the Maenads—wild, unrestrained, consumed by rhythm and passion. The club itself, named after the winged horse of Greek mythology, suggests both transcendence and escape, a place where bodies take flight in the music’s spell. Yet, despite the atmosphere of abandon, the speaker maintains a position of observation, telling another man, “I’m just here for the music.” This line establishes a sense of detachment, but one that is soon complicated by memory and recognition.

The poem shifts between past and present as the speaker recalls his childhood friend, Curtis. Their youthful play—leaping barefoot into a creek, dancing among the detritus of beer bottles and piss—contrasts with the refined artifice of the club. The creek, with its "tadpoles slippery as sperm," introduces a subtle but potent suggestion of latent sexuality, a physical closeness between boys that is later refracted through the dance floor’s eroticism. The memory of their bodies in contact—“We used to pull off our shirts, / & slap music into our skin”—foreshadows the physical intimacy unfolding in the club, where "they press hip to hip, / each breathless as a boy / carrying a friend on his back." The past is not merely remembered; it is resurrected through the gestures of the men around him.

As the speaker watches, the nightclub scene takes on an almost mythic significance. The description of the young man slipping “his thumb / into the mouth of an old one” is arresting, an image of vulnerability and power, of hunger and initiation. The poem does not shy away from the rawness of desire, nor does it reduce these encounters to mere carnality. Instead, the club becomes a space of both peril and beauty, where bodies blur and identities dissolve in the spinning light. The speaker acknowledges this power: "These men know something / I used to know." This recognition signals a shift—he is no longer just an observer. Something in the spectacle resonates deeply, pulling him back to a knowledge that is both bodily and spiritual.

The final lines elevate the nightclub’s dance floor to the level of the sacred. The men do not simply move; they “dive & spill / into each other.” The club itself takes them “wet & holy in its mouth.” This closing image transforms the dance into a baptism, an act of communal surrender that transcends mere pleasure. In this moment, the club becomes a church, a space of initiation and transformation, where desire is not only acknowledged but sanctified.

"At Pegasus" is a poem of dualities—past and present, innocence and experience, detachment and immersion. Hayes captures the tension between youthful intimacy and adult longing, between nostalgia and the unrelenting pulse of the now. The poem’s structure, moving seamlessly between memory and observation, mirrors the way time itself operates in the speaker’s mind, collapsing into a single, fluid motion like the bodies on the dance floor. In this space of flashing lights and music, where flesh meets memory, the speaker confronts a truth about himself—one he cannot look away from, one that is as beautiful as it is inescapable.

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