Ramon Loyola
Histories

We were twelve, naïve,
and the summers were long,
when birds seemed to hum
in rhythm with the silent passing clouds.

You touched me there,
where the skin smelled of the sun,
and told me of a fate
only we could have foreseen.

We were nineteen, queer,
and the rain fell for four straight days,
when you said it was your destiny
to place yourself beside me.

It was a fragile year, challenging disease,
when we were each all of twenty-eight,
when the shell that encased us
seemed to crack at the bottom.

We could get married, we thought then,
even though the Bible apparently said no.
And the idea that two men could get married,
one day, remained the sweetest yearning.

Time had worn us out,
and there came to be an uneasy space
between what was yours
and what was definitely not mine.

(It wasn’t mine, because all I had was you.)

I was verging on forty, and so were you,
when we thought it was our story
that bound us tightly together.
The empty vase became full again with flowers.

You cracked a smile, still naïve,
the most tender I had ever seen in years,
and told me to hang on.
We were almost there.

We were there then and we are here now.
The skin still smells of that sun from long ago
and I can hear the birds humming again,
a difficult history foretold, lived and repeated.

(It is mine now, because I still have you.)

Ramon Loyola is the author of The Measure of Skin (Vagabond Press, 2018). An Australian-based, Philippines-born writer of poems, fiction and non-fiction, his work has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Rambutan Literary, and Gargouille, among other journals.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a love poem.

Steven Cordova
What Shall Poor Cordova Do?

Tragedy?
Love, like poor Cordelia, and be silent?
Be, like mad Hamlet, not to be?
Get his ass to a nunnery, now?

(The quality of his meds is not strained, you know.
It droppeth as gentle rain from Gilead
on the gays beneath. Oh,
If you prick him, doth he not bleed?
Oh,
If you pickle him, doth he not keep?)

Or should poor Cordova try his hand at history?
He wasted time and now Triumeq wastes Him?
(O! for a cure of fire that would ascend
Cordova’s brightest heaven of transgression!)

Now does the winter of his discontent
Throw merciless shade upon this sun of (New) York.

Steven Cordova is the author of the poetry collection Long Distance (Bilingual University Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in Art & Understanding, The James White Review, Evergreen Chronicles, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000), edited by Agha Shahid Ali. Cordova won the 2012 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem that invokes a well-known work of literature, music, or other art or performance medium. Today’s poet riffs on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What about the films Apocalypse Now! or 2001: A Space Odyssey as HIV poems? What about an HIV poem that recalls Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition? Tchaikovsky’s Swann Lake? Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2? The possibilities are endless!

Scott-Patrick Mitchell
post-innocence

when we were young
we used to play kiss chasey
running around playgrounds
through tunnels, across monkey bars
wiping boy germs / girl germs
from our lips, with a laugh

now there is sex
fluid
rubber
& penetration

two selves trying to conquer
every fantasy they ever had

now there is sex
& uncertainty

prepping in the bathroom

biohazard bags & blood

the fluid, the rubber
the unseen open cuts

now there is sex
three letters
& mathematics

Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s work appears in New Poets (Fremantle Press, 2010) and Performance Poets (Fremantle Press, 2013) (Fremantle Press) as well as in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry (Desperation Press/ turnrow Books, 2013), Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016) and The Fremantle Press Anthology of Contemporary West Australian Poetry (2017). SPM is the Social Media Coordinator for WA Poets INC / Perth Poetry Festival.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem that contrasts two different times, places, or situations: then/now, single/married, younger/older, there/here, etc.

Mel Waldman
Metamorphosis

ACT I
BLACK METAMORPHOSIS
TERROR & THANATOS

Harlem
requiem 125th ’tween Lex & Park the Lee Building Beth Israel MMTP

Harlem
trauma primordial fear in daylight the sprawling sun & after dark

1981
the seething sin of mystery the bestial year of the broken cocoon & black metamorphosis

&
soon a freaky unknown virus at the Lee slithers ferociously through the fire of invisibility

addicts
under siege blacks Hispanics & gays too in the crosshairs of culture

condemning
me & you—me: the pariah-healer; you: the victims-lepers

vanishing
at the Last Supper

ACT II
LUMINOUS METAMORPHOSIS
SURVIVAL

Days
of struggle & salvation & years of despair & rebirth rush slowly

&
carry us to another place blessed with the kaleidoscopic passage of hope

a
cornucopia of opalescence & waves of iridescence glorious gems of light

otherworldly
visions that empower & caress & bestow the gift to cope

luminous
metamorphosis

as
we find life-sustaining experimental meds & fewer death beds

but
still too many deaths

ACT III
TRANSCENDENT METAMORPHOSIS
LIVING & THRIVING

Now
we are

free
& beautiful

like
the multicolored butterflies of the sacred earth

sailing
across the turquoise seas & skies

free
in rebirth

&
bathed in transcendent metamorphosis

free
& released from the prison of words

for
this is

our
truth

re-naming
who we are

I—
the beautiful potent healer

You—
empowered transformed & evolving humans of beauty & divinity

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem captures the major phases in the AIDS epidemic in major urban areas in the United States from the 1980s to the present. It is important to remember, however, that many people, both in the US and around the world, have been left out of the “TRANSCENDENT METAMORPHOSIS—LIVING & THRIVING” phase of the epidemic because of disparities in access to healthcare. Such disparities are all too often driven by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and income inequality, as well as by the shame and stigma still widely associated with HIV. (Note that MMTP in today’s poem stands for methadone maintenance treatment program.)

Mel Waldman writes poems, stories, plays, essays, and memoir. memoir, essays, short stories, poetry, and plays. His poems have appeared in Indiana Voice Journal, Mad Swirl, Two Drops of Ink, Brickplight, and other journals. Holding a doctorate in psychology, Waldman is a practicing psychologist and a candidate in psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem that uses an art form as a metaphor for HIV. For example, today’s poem uses the three-act structure of a stage performance—perhaps a play, opera, or ballet. You might also try addressing HIV in terms of music or the visual arts. You need not limit yourself to structural elements like the acts of a play or the movements of a symphony. You might invoke concepts such as musical timbre or the brush strokes of a painting. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Steven Cordova
Song for the 70s

Bring back the disco nap,

the ol’ night cap,
all the love & sap.

Bring back the disco nap,

a droll chap on my lap,
some molly to put us on the map.

Bring back the disco nap,

a cold keg of beer on tap,
all the dish & flap & snap.

Bring back the disco nap.

Turn down the crap,
shut your yap & clap,

Bring back the disco nap,

(clap, clap, clap)

Bring back the disco nap,

(the disco nap, the disco nap, the disco nap…)

(clap, clap, clap)

Steven Cordova is the author of the poetry collection Long Distance (Bilingual University Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in Art & Understanding, The James White Review, Evergreen Chronicles, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000), edited by Agha Shahid Ali. Cordova won the 2012 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem that uses assonance—the repetition of a vowel sound. Technically, today’s poem uses good old-fashioned rhyme; but the rhyme is so insistent that it feels more like assonance. In assonance, it’s the vowel (or diphthong) sounds that are the same. So, if instead of using “nap,” “cap,” and “sap,” today’s poet used “nap,” “camp,” and “stand,” it would have been true assonance, because the vowel sound is the same, even though the actual word endings are not identical.

Sandy Livingston
Ode to James

I threw that knife away; it seemed to threaten me
I know it was inanimate but it brought back memories
It happens to be the twin of the one I took to Jim
To peel and slice his fruit, it makes me think of him
You see he lost the knife I’d taken to him before
So next time I got two in case he needed more

You wonder who’s this Jim, his first name’s really James
Because it’s just so painful I’ve lost his other names
James was a past co-worker with whom I’d lost touch
Until my daughter called long distance that he needed friends and such
I called him in the hospital and when he talked to me
No doubt was in my mind—alright I knew he’d be

When I had gone to see him I called her that they’d lied
They’d said he was all gray and anorexic besides
His hair was always gray mixed in with the black
And though he’d lost some weight he soon could gain that back
He said he had infection in his mouth deep in the gums
We both thought this was minor our faith was blind and dumb

So I went out shopping bought vitamins he’d need
And fruit with knives to peel it so back to health he’d speed
But neither of us reckoned that he was so very sick
We didn’t know his illness could bring him down so quick
The next time three weeks later I brought him some more stuff
The new knife was included but James was in a huff

He was mad that he had cancer quite firmly diagnosed
He’d signed for radiation with which he’d just been dosed
I looked at him with sorrow saw red marks on his cheek
He now was anorexic and he could hardly speak
He walked round his room an IV in his arm
He said the radiation he hoped would do no harm

One eye was dull and staring now he was partly blind
I gave him my red glasses I wanted to be kind
I hoped that they might help him but deep inside I rued
That he might need a miracle to make his eyes renewed
But I held on to my faith as I left him standing tall
This guy’s a real tough fighter he might refuse death’s call

I learned a few days later he was confined to his bed
I felt that was an error he should be up instead
I couldn’t return to see him no visitors were allowed
His private nurse reported he couldn’t speak out loud
He sank down low each day but she was impressed with him
Cause anyone who called he said “Say thanks to them”

Yes, James was kind and thoughtful sometimes said words quite keen
And sometimes he was cranky but never never mean
His peers at Paramount liked him despite some spats and such
They knew within his heart he craved their love so much
He died one Monday morning around eight forty-five
Of AIDS that dreaded scourge from which few stayed alive

I couldn’t cry then about him the pain was too intense
I’ve thought of life without him and pondered ever since
Had James been given to us to touch our lives and such
Then leave us pleasant memories of one we liked so much
Cause he could be so funny so charming and genteel
No matter whom he dealt with they knew James was for real

So all who knew James’s spirit when he was put to test
Will hope that since he’s left us his soul will be at rest
He shouldn’t have had to suffer but in 1983
AIDS only offered pain and death for all to see
It seemed so quick and shocking some cried for quite awhile
But let’s be glad we knew him and think of James and smile

Sandy Livingston did not provide a bio. She states, “The poem is rather self-explanatory. The pain is still with me. It is a sampling of my attempts to make some sense of it all when at that time James was but one of many who left us so quickly.”

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem using rhyme. America’s poetic grandma, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) used rhyme, but our poetic grandpa, Walt Whitman (1819–1892), pioneered free verse, and over time, rhyme became increasingly unfashionable (except in the case of fixed rhyming forms like the triolet, the villanelle, and the sonnet) and associated with doggerel (comic verse such as that written by Calvin Trillin). Nevertheless, rhyme remains a valid poetic technique, and every poet should at least experiment with rhyme at some point in their development.

Editor’s Note: Rhyme is often associated with meter—that is, a fixed rhythmic pattern, usually of stressed and unstressed syllables. While this is not the place for a full account of meter, I want at least briefly to discuss the rhythm of today’s poem. Today’s poem uses a six-beat line; that is, each line has six stressed syllables. The poet uses a variety of metrical feet (combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables) within this basic six-beat pattern. The most basic pattern in today’s poem is iambic hexameter (six iambs—an iamb being an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable; e.g., “I threw” and “that knife” and “away” in line 1 of today’s poem). Most of these iambic hexameter lines have a strong medial caesura (medial=in the middle of the line; caesura is a pause); again, using line 1 as an example: “I threw / that knife / away; // it seemed / to threa /ten me.” In line 2, however, in place of the third iamb in the first half of the line, we find the word “inanimate,” made up of three unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable—a pattern that goes by the unwieldy name quartus paeon in classical Greek and Latin metrical terminology. No need to fret too much about all of this metrical mumbo jumbo. You can read all about it on various websites and in numerous books. For now, just follow your instincts and have fun.

Michael Broder
#hivtest #hivtreat #hivprevent #nohivshame #nohivstigma

For over 25 years now I’ve been living with HIV.
I was being evaluated for severe dermatitis when I took the test
that came back positive. Nothing you could do to treat
HIV infection back then. We had drugs to prevent
opportunistic infections, but there was no pill for the shame
so many felt—although I had little sense of shame or stigma

around my HIV infection. Sure, I had reason to feel stigmatized—
guys leaving a first date mid-dinner when you disclose your HIV
status certainly didn’t help. But overall I was pretty shameless.
To me, these kinds of rejections served more to test
my own resolve to stay, well, positive—anger helped prevent
me from slipping into despair, reminded me to treat

myself well, be gentle with myself, give myself little treats
now and then—a new pair of orange Chuck Taylors. But stigma
on a population basis posed a serious challenge to prevention
efforts. It was hard to get people to access services for HIV
when you risked your job or home just by getting tested,
when religious and political leaders trafficked in shame,

scapegoated the most vulnerable, stoked shame
and fear to distract from their failure to support treatment
efforts—government for the most part encouraged testing
so we could “protect the innocent” from infection—stigma
substituting for real health policy—turning HIV
into a referendum on gays and drug addicts to prevent

the public from demanding action, turning prevention
into an excuse for discrimination and using shame
to fuel hatred and violence against people with HIV.
In 1996, the FDA approved the first effective treatments—
science and profit motive overcoming fear and stigma.
The AIDS epidemic was perhaps the ultimate test

of capitalism as a force for social good; I could testify,
as a medical communications professional, that preventing
sickness and death motivated researchers to brave the stigma
connected even with studying AIDS. What a shame,
the deep contempt with which Reagans and Falwells treated
people whose only crime was becoming infected with HIV.

The AIDS pandemic continues to test us, continues to shame
us for our failure to prevent suffering, for continuing to treat
it as someone’s else problem—stigma still the ultimate risk factor for HIV.

Editor’s Note: I generally don’t like sestinas, but every poet should know what they are and how they work, so we needed an example of one for Na(HIV)PoWriMo, so duck duck goose, here you go. I decided to take the end-words from the hashtags I developed for HIV Here & Now back in 2015; how convenient that there turned out to be the requisite six of them! I tested positive for HIV on October 18, 1990. I believe I was infected by my beloved Anthony Ibrahin Salinas (1955–1994), the Tony of the “Tony Poems” in my first book; at least, I like to think so.

Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Drug and Disease Free (Indolent Books, 2016), edited and with an introduction by Jameson Fitzpatrick. He is the founding publisher and managing editor of Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press in Brooklyn. Broder and his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, were among the first gay men to be married in the United States. They live in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with a colony of stray and feral cats.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a sestina addressing HIV. The sestina has six stanzas and a final half-stanza often called an envoi. The six stanzas exhibit a precise pattern of end-words: ABCDEF, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA. That is, each succeeding stanza begins with the last end-word from the previous stanza (end-word #6), and then bounces back and forth like a ping pong ball to the preceding stanza’s end-word #1, #5, #2, #4, and finally #3. The envoi uses two end-words in each of its three lines; in particular, with reference to the first stanza, it uses end-words #2 and #5 in its first line, #4 and #3 in its second line, and #6 and #1 in its third line, in that order. Traditionally, the first word in the pair appears anywhere but the end of the line, and the second word in the pair is the last word in the line—but many poets today ignore the traditional end-word ordering of the envoi. If you search online for “sestina,” you will find many more detailed explanations of the form.

Davidson Garrett
An Opera Within An Opera: 1986

Richard & I planned for a year
to attend Joan Sutherland’s
25th Anniversary Gala
at The Metropolitan Opera.
I snagged a couple of hot tickets
& like flighty opera queens
we were giddy as children
about hearing our great Diva
dazzle with vocal fireworks
in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani.
Unfortunately, when the night
arrived, my classical music pal
was hooked-up like an astronaut
wearing an oxygen mask & tubes
connected to an emaciated body
suffering the last stages of AIDS.
Visiting his bleak hospital room
on the performance afternoon,
he insisted I go to the Met alone.
Reluctantly, I left for Lincoln Center
bittersweet without his presence.
After curtain calls, around midnight,
I dashed back to Harlem Hospital
sneaking into a darkened ward
as he languished in a custodial bed.
Surprisingly, I found him wide awake
as I was breathless with enthusiasm
describing how La Stupenda
nailed the blazing coloratura.
Despite his labored breathing,
he smiled—grasping my hand
joyful at the soprano’s triumph.
Weeks later, he gracefully died
& I wrote to Miss Sutherland
relating how her cassette tapes
comforted Richard in his last days.
Answering with a hand-written
letter, she expressed her wish
for a cure for the dreaded disease.
A cherished keepsake, framed
to remind me of the fortitude
& courage my dear friend displayed
during his own operatic death scene.

Davidson Garrett is the author of the poetry collection King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor/Taxi Driver (Advent Purple Press, 2006) and the chapbook What Happened To The Man Who Taught Me Beowulf? and Other Poems (Advent Purple Press, 2017). A taxi driver for the past 40 years, Garrett is a graduate of The City College of New York and a member of SAG/Aftra and Actors Equity.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a narrative poem addressing any aspect of HIV. Not how today’s poem uses mostly prose rhythms and does not use poetic devices like rhyme, meter, refrains, anaphora, apostrophe, stanzas, or formal structures like the sonnet, triolet, villanelle, or sestina. Today’s poem does use lineation—that is, line breaks. You may want to try drafts of your narrative poem with line breaks or without. If you do not use line breaks, you are writing a prose poem…which is a nice thing to try out.

Dennis Rhodes
Atonement

—for Cary

When you called me in the middle of the night
I should have said yes instead of no.
I had an important meeting the next day.
I heard the background noise in the bar—
figured you’d find someone, get it off.
It’s the most selfish thing I ever did
turning you away. There was no one in
my bed that night. I heard desperation
in your voice. I couldn’t be bothered. Had
I known what would happen Cary, had I
known you’d be dead of it within a year
I would have understood you did not want
sex. You needed to make love. I would have
met you at the bottom of the stairs with
open arms. O, can you forgive me! I
weep with shame thirty years later. The tears
sting my eyes. Teardrops fall on the paper.
I’d give anything, anything to have
that moment back. My human instincts failed.
What kind of friend was I, what kind of
man? I rolled over, went back to sleep. Damn
it Cary, damn it all. What a shithead
I was. I see now, clearly, I loved you.

I’ve never even visited your grave.

Dennis Rhodes is the author of Spiritus Pizza & Other Poems (Vital Links, 2000) and Entering Dennis (Xlibris, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared in BLOOM, Chelsea Station, Lambda Literary Review, The Cape Cod Times, New York Newsday, Fine Gardening, Avocet, Backstreet, Ibbetson Street, bear creek haiku, Aurorean, and Alembic, among others. Rhodes served as literary editor of Body Positive magazine (an important source of information for people living with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 90s) and later as poetry editor of Provincetown Magazine. He co-founded the Provincetown Poetry Festival and ran it from 1999–2001. For a number of years, Rhodes hosted a radio program on WOMR in Provincetown, featuring interviews and poetry readings with a different Provincetown or Cape Cod poet every week.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem is another example of apostrophe—addressing a person who is absent or dead. But we can also write poems addressed to a “you” who is alive, whether a real “you” or an imaginary you. This is called a poem of direct address. Write a poem of direct address in which you talk to the “you” about some aspect of HIV—fear of, risk for, living with, dying of, etc.