A poem a day by a different poet leading up to World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, 2019
Benjamin Garcia Ode to the Corpse Flower In the language of flowers // I am the one who says // fuck you I won’t be anyone’s nosegay // this Mary is her own // talking bouquet never let a man speak for you or call you // what he wants // I learned that the … [Read more…]
M. Protacio-De Guzman Grief Waking up from a dream where We were buying dark-coated horses And riding them back to our cottage Nestled on the foot of the mountains, I shield my eyes from the harsh light Of the morning that feels empty, Like the other side of my bed. Passing the time accompanied By … [Read more…]
David Groff Autopsy Report What kills the people I love? Doctors disagree. The route out may have been clear, but the acceleration to the cliff is mystery. Like my mother with her exquisite chest pains at 5:25 AM—a torn value or a heart attack, it doesn’t matter but to me. To the ER she was … [Read more…]
Constantine Jones NAPSALM ( for the + ) BOOK of ISAIAH 61 To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we are presenting it as a PDF. Click here or on the link below to open the PDF in a new tab. NAPSALM ( for the + ) BOOK of ISAIAH 61 by Constantine Jones … [Read more…]
Pauletta Hansel And Then For John Ray At first everything makes you think of him: street corners, houses, rooms you entered together, pictures of the far-off lands you meant to see, someday, even your own silent, sacred places you enter alone as if naked and holy— those remind you, too. They are hard and bright … [Read more…]
Roxanne Hoffman Oak Leaf Choka 5-7-7 Katuata in Sedoka Pairs for artist Eric Rhein and his Leaves when is an oak leaf no longer the oak’s garment? where does it go when it leaves? before damsels fly the oak leaf becomes an ark for nymphs to glide down rivers § is it still a leaf … [Read more…]
Peter Mitchell Bed 11 18 June 1992: admission to Ward 17 South, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst.* Eight beds half-a-metre apart in a room meant for six. My hard plank of respite is Bed 11. Bedhead lamps halo light upwards. In this ward, some shining lives become future dark. Bones protrude their parchment skin, their bodies … [Read more…]
Michael Mackin O’Mara Interrogation Survival Techniques circa 1988 “And how were you infected?” she asks and if it weren’t for the non-disclosure clause I would tell her about the side effects of alien-abduction-time-travel where an orgy of mosquitos the size of pterodactyls had their stinging way with me, and the retired CIA officer who water-boarded … [Read more…]
D. Scott Humphries The Blood Test, 1986 A test I’m told to take. A test I cannot pass. A score that will not save me but put me on one side or another of an imaginary line, a thin line, a blood line, a line I don’t want to cross. After seeing the thrush in … [Read more…]
Deborah Poe This poem originally appeared in the anthology Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora (Third World Press, 2007), edited by Randall Horton, M L Hunter, and Becky Thompson. It was also include in the poetry collection Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords 2008). Deborah Poe is the author of the … [Read more…]