Hourglass

By CJ Stobinski Contributing Editor We cross paths with many soul mates during the hours of our lives. Some are friends, others lovers. Some are strangers we meet in passing at boutique sandwich shops, exchanging words of hope, fear, despair, anxiety, and wisdom, trading stories across generations, helping each other breathe a little easier, a … [Read more…]

Truvada Blues

By Joss Barton Contributing Editor Baby birds squallin’ in a nest made of hay, twigs, and garbage lodged beneath the sleeve air conditioner outside your apartment window. Should you ask the landlord to have pest control destroy the nest? You think of how death based on discomfort always brings the worst kinds of karma, like … [Read more…]

A Tail of Two Kitties: How HIV Woke Me Up to LIVE

By CJ Stobinski Contributing Editor April 9, 2016—This morning I awoke to seven inches of snow covering my car and, for that matter, everything else in sight. Even in Toledo, where all four seasons can be experienced in a day, one hardly expects to encounter this much snow so far into the year. “Pretty,” I … [Read more…]

THE WORLD IS A VIRUS, THE WORLD IS A VIRUS, THE WORLD IS A VIRUS, THE SPIRIT CAN ONLY SECRETE THE MEMORY OF A WOUND, THE PAIN SETTLES SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE BONE

By Joss Barton Contributing Editor I can’t begin without admitting defeat. When I agreed to become a contributing editor for HIV Here & Now, I knew I wanted to craft a narrative and visual project that would become an honest document on the current state of HIV/AIDS art and activism in America. I wanted to … [Read more…]

Charlie Sheen, poz on meds, undetectable

Charlie Sheen joins the 1.2 million people in the US living with HIV, including me, and the 50,000 people in the US newly infected every year. Welcome aboard, Charlie. As you know, Charlie, because you are apparently in care, on meds, and virologically suppressed (“undetectable”), HIV is not a death sentence. But it’s not a … [Read more…]

HIV Here & Now reaches Poem 100

We posted Poem 100 today in our poem-a-day countdown to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016. Here is the amazing list of poets we have featured to date. I do think we have a diversity problem, though: inadequate representation of poets whose first names begin with the letters U through Z. Aaron DeLee, Alfred … [Read more…]

Wordsworth’s daffodils, or how to write an HIV poem

By Michael Broder I am not going to tell you how to write an HIV poem. But I am going to ask you to write an HIV poem. And I am going to ask you to consider the issue of HIV as a matter for poetry. A number of poets I’ve solicited for The HIV Here & … [Read more…]

Showing up

By Michael Broder Today’s post is about showing up. I’m working on a blog post about why you should write a new poem for the HIV Here & Now print anthology. That’s taking me some time because I don’t want to wag fingers, I want to say something real and true about HIV as a … [Read more…]

HIV Here & Now turns 50…days old, that is

So we’re up to Poem 50 in our poem-a-day countdown to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016. Take a look at the stunning roster of poets we have featured to date: Michael Broder Julene T. Weaver Merrill Cole Sarah Sarai L. Lamar Wilson Joan Larkin Risa Denenberg Steven Cordova Eileen R. Tabios Joseph … [Read more…]

On July 3, 1981, AIDS made its debut in The New York Times

On this date in 1981, an article appeared in The New York Times by Lawrence K. Altman with the headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” The rare cancer was Kaposi’s sarcoma, or KS, which was generally seen in older men of Mediterranean descent, and even then in small numbers as a slowly progressing cancer. These patients, by contrast, from New … [Read more…]