A poem a day by a different poet leading up to World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, 2016
Roxanne Hoffman Once Bitten It’s been written, though never proved that once bitten, by one less than thrice removed from the source of the venom ― the plumed serpent rattling ― that each night, thereafter, your soul alights upon black crepe wings. You hear the hyena’s laughter howling insidious within your ear, and though your … [Read more…]
Merrill Cole Warm Brother Around my head the ghost face rolls, unsteady halo, stolen gold, radioactive discharge burning off, all I could never bring myself to bless. Lopsided man, can you say or guess what fig leafs your cold nakedness, the half-life of quarter-loves, shadow figures against the wall—all man, or maybe doll? Who cannot … [Read more…]
Matthew Cook An Appetite for Distances Let’s talk about dawn, hardly a state, though foggy territory without coffee. To understand this feeling is to see part of the rock in the palm hiding the bruise it leaves. The morning air shines slick as china saucers. Location is a relationship, an appetite for distances. Someone plays … [Read more…]
James Langdon The Night Thor Brought News of Uncle Bruce’s AIDS to Howell Hollow Thunderous booms stiffened my back and brought coherence to my underdeveloped piss brain, as rapid-fire lightening stalks lit up the back forty every quarter second for at least the first half-minute I glanced out my bedroom window onto the rolling false … [Read more…]
Levi Mericle Redemption How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality. —Christina Baldwin Forgive me Father, but I am not a dying age. not a lopsided heart cage you pretend to enter. Where all you’ll find here is barbed wire the rotted stench of heartbreak-meat … [Read more…]
Miguel Murphy Status Because the storms, white emissions, emissaries of spring come spilling winter too— He looked into my face as if leaning into a mirror he could not drink. Please— Your bone structure is superb. Your heart is haute couture. The plague has petals handsomer than yours. As if pleasure had a counterfeit. As … [Read more…]
Benjamin Garcia Spine After Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column My backbone is my stem, my head the bud, brain-pink layered petals, a whirlpool’s rictus tugs the sepal skull to bloom— break, bedazzle, bumble my innards outward. A god/flower/girl said: if a flower opens, it means I want you to try to slam me shut—good luck! … [Read more…]
R. Zamora Linmark Split-Second Serenity This afternoon I read about the time Tim was admitted to Ward G-9 for AIDS complications. Former lovers, magazine editors, and writers with drag aliases also dropped by, as themselves or as apparitions. But every night, at around six, his lover Chris arrived to coax Tim into finishing his meal, … [Read more…]
Oz Hardwick Murmuration Even hummingbirds are heavier than air, their weight measured in sincerity, their wings husks of forgetfulness. I don’t want to acknowledge their falling, their downward dance to feathers stuffed into pillows on a dull brass bed, so, instead, I will call into question the wider relations between components: bed, sky, all uncertain … [Read more…]
Jason Schneiderman Rapture There’s a movie about a woman who can’t love God. It’s a terrible movie. Low budget. Poorly acted. It’s clumsy and obvious, but I used to watch it over and over because it had something I needed. A woman, who, visited by God, cannot love him. Her husband is dead, her daughter … [Read more…]