Ed Madden
First

My first was not my first that is
my first boyfriend but not my first

sex but he was the first I knew
who was sure and also he was

careful and open and able to talk
about it which wasn’t true of men

or at least some of the men
I had sex with those years of being

in the closet our tongues our lips
locked by silence and shame our names

not important nor our lives.
He was willing to tell his story

but maybe the others were too
it was just me unable to talk

or to listen as if my silence
might protect me—I was fettered

by fear. He gave me my first
pride rings that chain that marked

the olympics of coming out maybe
even though I really hadn’t

at least to folks at home where
the first local man who I knew

was gay came home to die, and my best
friend from seminary died a few

years ago and I didn’t know
didn’t even know until after

too late to reconnect to tell
our stories over again as if

for the first time.

Ed Madden is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), a memoir in verse about caring for his father in his last months of living with cancer; and the chapbook, So they can sing, winner of the 2016 Robin Becker Poetry Prize from Seven Kitchens Press. Madden is the director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem is called “First” and is about the speakers first boyfriend. Write a poem based on a cardinal number (one, two, three, etc.) or an ordinal number (first, second, third, etc.). The possibilities are endless: first date, second chance, third base, “I’d had one too many,” “we walked two-by-two,” “she asked three times before I said yes,” etc. Notice that today’s poem uses the word “first” several times throughout the poem, including as the very last word. Try to use your number as many times as possible throughout your poem.

Noah Stetzer
results

with my hands wringing my hands and my skin
wet with bad news sweat — his come to jesus
tone of voice, with the matter of factness
of his face I stumble fast to keep up,
to fit his square cliche into the round
hole in my head, to square this flat lit room’s
offensively humdrum utility
with this out-of-the-blue comet strike hit —
the satisfaction of hearing confirmed
what I fear submerged in the cold water
that what I fear’s the worst—the room’s too small
for this, his sad face takes up too much space.

Noah Stetzer’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Horsethief, Vinyl, Bellevue Literary Review, and the New England Review, among other journals. He is the author of Because I can See Needing a Knife (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). Stetzer has received scholarships from the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers and from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Born and raised in Pittsburgh PA, Stetzer now lives in the Washington DC area and can be found online at noahstetzer.com.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem is about receiving an HIV-positive test result. Write a poem in which the speaker receives an HIV-positive test result. You do not have to be HIV-positive to write a poem like this. It can be a persona poem, a poem in which the first-person speaker is not the same as the poet. The speaker can be completely imaginary or you can write in the voice of an actual HIV-positive person (you just want to be careful about confidentiality if the person is not public about their HIV status).

Michael Broder
Triolet for Bed-Stuy

While these boys on Grindr look for generous men,
their cousins spit “faggot” in the street as you pass them.
Taste the champagne piss and caviar semen
of the boy you find on Grindr looking for generous men.
Smell of weed strengthens as the shadows darken,
as you touch the soft warm lining of his rectum.
Is that your bae on Grindr looking for generous men?
Do you kick faggots in the street when you pass them?

Author’s / Editor’s Note: I did not have any submissions I felt comfortable posting today. And the intention of this project is to feature work written within the past 24 hours or as soon as possible thereafter—it’s more a project about generating new poems than revising them or perfecting them. And I’ve been intrigued by the triolets written by HIV Here & Now contributors over the years. I’ve never written a triolet. So I just wrote the one above. It reflects my own experience living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, which has among the highest incidence and prevalence of HIV anywhere in the US or, for that matter, in the world. (Perhaps I should note that Grindr is a queer hookup app; “generous” is used to refer to men who will pay for sex; and “bae” is a term for boyfriend that was first used by young black gay men but is now used by younger queer people more widely.)

Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in Classics from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Broder lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem does not mention HIV. Instead, it talks about some of the social conditions surrounding HIV, including risky sex, sex for money, drug use, and antigay violence. Write a poem that implies HIV without mentioning it or referring to it directly.

Mary Ellen Talley
Triolet for Ryan White

We look back and say it was an age of cruel.
Which comes first and lasts longer, fear or ignorance?
His life-saving transfusion cast him in a public cesspool.
We look back and say it was an age of cruel.
With his 1984 diagnosis came harassment and death sentence.
Allowed back in school, he soared five years like a teen Icarus.
We look back and say it was an age of cruel.
Which comes first and lasts longer, fear or ignorance?

Editor’s Note: Ryan White died 28 years ago today. White, a teenager in Kokomo, Indiana, was one of the first children with hemophilia to be diagnosed with AIDS. While medical professionals knew he posed no risk to other students, parents and teachers in Howard County protested his attendance at school. White was allowed to return to school only after a drawn out administrative appeal process. By that time, he had become a popular celebrity and a powerful advocate for AIDS research and public education. He died on April 8, 1990, one month before his high school graduation.

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have recently appeared in Raven Chronicles, U City Review, and Ekphrastic Review as well as in the anthologies All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood (Sage Hill Press, 2016), edited by Elise Gregory, Emily Gwinn, Kaleen McCandless, Kate Maude, and Laura Walker; Ice Cream Poems: Reflections on Life With Ice Cream (World Enough Writers, 2017), edited by Patricia Fargnoli; and Poems in the Aftermath: An Anthology From the 2016 Presidential Transition Period (Indolent Books, 2018), edited by Michael Broder.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem is a triolet—usually an 8-line form, although the number of lines may vary. You can read more about the triolet form here and here. The power of the triolet lies in its repetition of lines and end-words. Another example of a triolet from the HIV Here & Now project is “Triolet for Uncle Dennis” by D. Gilson. Try writing a triolet related to HIV/AIDS—perhaps about a prominent person, like Ryan White, or someone known only to family and friends, like D. Gilson’s Uncle Dennis. You can also write a poem that is not about a specific person, or about a person at all—it can be about anything related to HIV/AIDS, such as the virus, the immune system, treatments, prevention, testing, risk, fear, etc.

Marjorie Moorhead
Set You Free

Clave! tap-tap-tap, tap-tap
tap-tap-tap-, tap-tap!

In 1984, we listen happily.
You tell me of salsa’s rhythm; Willie Colón, Celia Cruz

Rubén Blades y Seis Del Solar on cassette:
“Y a nosotros nos toca, hoy, ponerte en libertad”

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!

How is it, now that you are free?
Abiding pain in your soul and heart

only chemically constructed euphoria
would imperfectly soothe.

Como está? now at rest from battle,
fought so valiantly with sword of pen or brush.

Your canvas leaning forever idle against a wall,
drawing book closed.

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!

How is it, now that you don’t have to see?
Things you saw so clearly through to their essence:

inequity
unrequited beauty

How does it feel, now that you can float above
let others do the work of coping,

resisting,
creating anew?

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!

tap-tap-tap, tap-tap! Buscando América
“And it’s our turn today to set you free”

for Jorge Soto Sanchez

Marjorie Moorhead is a poet and survivor. Her poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, HIV Here & Now, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as in the anthologies A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017), edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson; and Birchsong: Poems Centered in Vermont Volume II (The Blueline Press, 2018), edited by Alice Wolf Gilborn, Rob Hunter, Carol Cone, Brenda Nicholson, and Monica Stillman. Her work will appear in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection, forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Moorhead lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem uses the figure of speech known as apostrophe, in which the writer or speaker speaks directly to someone who is absent or dead. Write a poem addressed directly to a person who is living with HIV or who died of AIDS. It can be a celebrity you admire (or admired) or a person you know (or knew) personally.

Dennis Rhodes
Dotty, the Window Washer

“Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’ bad. Somethin’ real
bad,” said Dotty the window washer back
in the summer of 1981.
My friend John was reminiscing at brunch
early in the new year—this new century.
I smiled broadly at the thought of Dotty.
Anyone in town for years knew Dotty—
blue jumpsuit, squeegee and pail, no nonsense.
The more this town changed around her, the more
she stayed the same, same jumpsuit, same squeegee
same short curly hair that stubbornly failed
to turn gray. Hard to imagine tourists
giving Dotty more than a curious glance.
What does a window washer matter to
someone just blowing in and out of town?
But she has earned her status as icon
among the locals, along with “Popeye”
and “Butchie.” They died when the town grew rich.
But Dotty soldiers on. Eccentrics
seem more and more out of place…

I felt a chil, hearing Dotty’s warning
stumble down through the years, years that made us
a killing field before the stark mercy
of protease inhibitors. It was
something she’d read in the paper, something
in passing. Minute but insidious.
“Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’ bad. Somethin’ real
bad.” Knowing Dotty, she needed for the world
to know. She told John. She told everyone
no doubt in that gay, frivolous summer
of 1981. When the killing started
what else could she do but what she
was supposed to do—wash all the windows
on Commercial Street. Keep the quaint façade
gleaming. After all, Provincetown’s a place
to celebrate summer, not to suffer.

Suffering is something we choose to do
on our own time and in our own way.
Summer tourists do not come for a glimpse
into the window of our dark winter.

Editor’s Note: This poem is set in Provincetown, located at the northeast tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. This small coastal resort is known for its beaches, harbor, artists, tourist industry, and its status as a vacation destination for the LGBTQ community. Given Provincetown’s historical connection with the LGBTQ community, it was profoundly impacted by the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s and 90s.

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 about a place—Provincetown—and it’s people (Dotty, Popeye, Butchie, etc.). The HIV/AIDS epidemic has always been associated with specific places, often places associated with heavily impacted communities, including gay enclaves like Greenwich Village and Fire Island in New York, Provincetown on Cape Cod, Mass., West Hollywood in Los Angeles, and The Castro in San Francisco, as well as African-American and Latino neighborhoods in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, San Juan, and Washington, DC, among others. Write a poem addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS in a specific community or neighborhood in the United States or worldwide.

Mark Ward
Freddie,

I remember
I was eight,

alone in the big living room
where I made worlds

and the news
people said

you died.
I sobbed,

the hurt shuddering out.
I didn’t understand the word

‘AIDS’ but knew what they meant
by ‘complication’. I didn’t know

how to name the pattern
recognition. I didn’t know

why I was crying like
life had killed me too.

Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Skylight47, Assaracus, Tincture, The Good Men Project, Storm Cellar, Studies in Arts and Humanities, Off the Rocks, The Wild Ones, Vast Sky, Animal, Headstuff, SCAB, and Emerge, as well as in the anthologies, Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, (Parlor Press, 2016), edited by D. Gilson; The Myriad Carnival (Lethe Press, 2016), edited by Matthew Bright; and Not Just Another Pretty Face (Beautiful Dreamer Press, 2016), edited by Louis Flint Ceci. He hails from Dublin and is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, a journal of LGBTQ+ poetry.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem, like our poem for April 1 (“Kaposi Something” by Victor Alcindor), is inspired by a childhood memory of HIV/AIDS. Write a poem based on your own childhood associations with HIV/AIDS. Alcindor wrote about a harrowing documentary he remembers seeing on PBS as a child; Ward remembers learning of the death of Freddie Mercury and writes about his own pain and confusion at this news. There are so many things you can write about if you were a child during the 1980s or 1990s. You could end up writing a whole sequence of poems!

Risa Denenberg
I am not at risk

Today I am not at risk.
No one touches me now. It is my own choice. Or is it?
Was I ever at risk?
If you count the times I shot meth.
If you count all of the unprotected sex I had with guys when I was living with my girlfriend but trying to get pregnant.
If you count all of the times I started IVs in the emergency room without wearing gloves.
If you count the six years I provided GYN care to HIV-positive women in the South Bronx.
I could tell you about the time I got chlamydia in my eyes, since gloves don’t protect eyes.
Gloves only give the illusion of protection.
If you count all my losses, I am at risk.
I am at risk as long as there is an epidemic.
As long as people give and take viruses through acts of love or sex or healthcare or IVDU or violence.
We live in a world of illusions when we deny risk.
I live in this world.
I am at risk.

Risa Denenberg is a working nurse practitioner and poet. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, a small independent publisher of poetry by lesbians. Her collection slight faith is forthcoming in May from MoonPath Press.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem was written in response to our prompt from April 2, “Write a poem about being at risk for HIV infection in 2018.” Denenberg makes great use of anaphora in this poem—the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses (“If you count”). Write a poem that uses anaphora. For some examples of anaphora used in poems, the Poetry Foundation suggests Paul Muldoon’s “As,” William Blake’s “The Tyger,” and much of Walt Whitman’s poetry, including “I Sing the Body Electric.” They also recommend Rebecca Hazelton’s essay, “Adventures in Anaphora.”

John Whittier Treat
Other People’s Poems: AIDS Quilt, Block Number 00169

John Whittier Treat is the author of the novel The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House (Big Table Publishing Company, 2015), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the journal Jonathan and in the anthology QDA: Queer Disability Anthology (Squares and Rebels, 2015), edited by Raymond Luczak. Originally from New Haven, he now lives in Seattle. For more information visit johntreat.com.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem is an ekphrastic poem, meaning a poem that describes a work of art. It is also an elegy for a person who died of AIDS—a person the poet may or may not have known personally. Try combining ekphrasis with elegy in the manner of today’s poem. If you want to write about someone memorialized in the quilt, you can search the quilt here—look up the name of any person who died of AIDS, whether famous or obscure, and if you find a quilt panel for them, use it as the basis of an ekphrastic elegy. You can also choose other objects as the basis of your ekphrastic elegy, such as a record album cover featuring Freddie Mercury, a self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, or a photograph of Elizabeth Glaser.

Julene T. Weaver
a new line cracked down through this body

like a rock slammed against a windshield
shattered to a star with radiating lines,
not pierced, but with full capacity to kill—

a seething throb—
an endless overactive immune system.

Now, lost beyond what was possible
when I was young, with unmarked blood—
before this virus—

I had time in childhood untainted
till the moment that nicked my aura

the errant mishap that started with death,
loss, grief—

the love of my life, my beloved whistling
father, who gave love every season,
we were a family young and beautiful.

after the war, he hitchhiked home
cross country, determined
to make a life filled with love

he did not live to see it splinter.

Julene Tripp Weaver is the author of truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. A contributor to HIV Here & Now, you can also find her work online at The Seattle Review of Books, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. Visit her website and follow her on Twitter @trippweavepoet.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem about being at risk for HIV infection in 2018. For some information that might help your poetic process on this topic, check out this page on who is at risk for HIV.