Mara Buck
A Few Hours

Buy me shrimp
on a clear day when
I can see the blue of
the ocean replicated in
the clean white plate
the waiter brings
as he stumbles to our table.
And let there be wine.
Oh, not an obnoxious
cork-sniffing vintage, only
something soft and cool
that soothingly sits politely
within its twinkling glass.
Please have a simple
violinist silhouetted against
that sea, playing, a bit
of bright Vivaldi.
All these things,
will you do for me?

Let me sit pertly in
a darkened, classy club—maybe
the Carlyle, maybe the Vanguard—
listening to sophisticated stylings
with those who drink too much,
neither to forget nor to remember,
but only because it is there.
My little black dress will
be sexy, yet not tart,
and I will indulge in Campari
while someone else pays the bill.
I will be witty. I will be gay.
I will sparkle.

I yearn to be with people who are glib.
I crave cleverness.
Give me a quip, a pun—
quick-witted banter.
Show me the mettle of your
gray matter.
Surround me with a never-ending
round of crystal martinis
of the mind.

Loosen my tongue with champagne.
Bathe me in kindly
diamond-reflected winks.
Keep the music smoky to match
the innuendo of the other little black dresses
who circle me with embracing cattiness.
Oh, take me back to that place
where all is parties or nothing at all.
Let me glitter, let me astonish, let me flirt,
until the time comes when I must
go home alone, for tomorrow
I must be whatever passes for me.

Mara Buck writes, paints, and rants in a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods. She has won awards or been short-listed by the Faulkner/Wisdom Society, the Hackney Awards, Carpe Articulum, Maravillosa, The Binnacle. Her work has appeared in Huffington Post, Crack the Spine, Blue Fifth, Pithead Chapel, Writing Raw, Whirlwind, Tishman Review, Maine Review, Apocrypha, Linnet’s Wings, Poets for Living Waters, The Lake, and other journals, as well as in numerous anthologies. A portfolio from her gallery-sized cancer installation was published in Drunken Boat. Paintings are in private collections in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Her art, poetry, and video appear on the website of the World Trade Center Memorial. Current projects include a novel and a collection of strange stories of Maine.

This poem appeared in Caper Literary Journal and was reprinted in Clarke’s Journal of the Arts.

Nathaniel A. Siegel

i follow the lead
of the man with eyes closed
blue John Dugdale
still sees
the titles of books
i can read from here
do i include them all
in random order
or just these
A Journal of the Plague Years
by Walter Holland
The Art of A.I.D.S. by Baker
Don’t Leave Me This Way:
Art in the Age of A.I.D.S.
NGA publisher
above my head extends
a black arm of a black man
photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe
the ambulance outside is stuck
in slow moving traffic
the siren screams
as only New York City
residents can hear
it blastingly loud
and then whoosh
relative quiet
relative silence
two journals down
a book Living With A.I.D.S.
A Photographic Journal
a young boy cries
the drivers press their horns
the attendants in the parking
garage for Memorial Sloan Kettering
Cancer Hospital create this
endless lineup of cars moving
slowly
how the drivers must feel
how the patient must feel
in the auditorium of Cornell Weill
Medical Center I heard Larry Kramer
speak to medical students and doctors
organ transplants are next he said
Larry received a new liver
the organs inside break down
do they fail, expire, work too hard
fighting this virus with the help
of existing pills
ones we gay men didn’t have before
he Larry Kramer and many many
other men and women fought our
“government” for
pushed them around who dragged their feet/
Martin recalls men like skeletons
carrying their laundry in bags he could
barely lift so the bags dragged along the
city sidewalks
I did ask him this question as I ask you
Who was the first person you knew who died
of A.I.D.S. ?
Martin said he had a friend a hispanic woman
sleep on his couch the next morning
Martin looked to the ceiling above the couch
for the leak the water must be coming in
from somewhere everything soaked the
sheets the cushions sopping wet
Martin looks at me night sweats fever
she was the first a straight hispanic friend
did i retell his telling with the same
drama gravitas humor that Martin did
will you will he will she forgive me God
if i don’t have her name at hand in my
failing mind now i could call Martin
he’s still here
remember to breathe as my stomach
tightens and continue to write the telling
Karen’s first male lover died of A.I.D.S.
I have two collages he created one male
one female she saved the work for many
years, then was ready to let them go
I asked for the collages I have them
I will find a home for them before my time
is up my life’s purpose perhaps
Visual A.I.D.S. a new york city organization
does just that preserves artwork of artists
who died from complications of H.I.V./A.I.D.S.
virus and artists living with H.I.V./ A.I.D.S. virus
I make a work of art for Visual A.I.D.S.
to sell a postcard one year a collage
inspired by Karen and my daily teas
may i say his name, first and last, first
only o.k. how old was he when he died
that was the 80s he must have been 30
something we talk some more try to
subtract get his age right Karen shocked
realizing her mistake she gave him her
soulmate 10 more years than he actually
lived he died in his 20s 28 to be exact
Karen says no one has made a real film
of the early time people tried to make it
I’m sure those who lived through it only
know the failings
me I lost Chuck Peters a man with creative
energy and vision for men’s designer fashion
beyond compare in the 1990s
in Tony I wrote of him and others
tears now in both eyes the one on the right
moves coolly down the left tear catches up
wet face wet cheeks tiny rivulet rivers/
in answer to a request for a poem
i write these words thanks for asking
i have poems written to Peter Harvey
i have poems written to Stanley Stellar
i have poems written to Charles Leslie
i have poems written to Delmas Howe
i have poems written to Robert Giard
i have poems written to Robert Mapplethorpe
and to you
you living
and you who have lost/
at the end of Sarah Schulman’s interview of
Brent Nicholson Earle I turned to Brent and
asked him how he would like to be remembered
and he said “that he remembered his friends.”
i’m glad i asked the question i did of him
and me and others
keeping Brent and friends alive/

hard to say

Photo: Greg Fuchs

Nathaniel A. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection Tony (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2009). He is an anti-war activist and photographer and, with Regie Cabico, curates the Poetry Marathon at the annual Rainbow Book Fair in New York City. He suggests you listen to the song “Why” by Bronski Beat.

This poem is not previously published and in fact was written expressly for The HIV Here & Now Project. Thank you, Nathaniel.

Amanda Deutch

nests hair refuge
massive palpitations
this skeleton
this open chest
wide landscape
above my breasts
vast in stones
it quarries
precious metals—
gems
press to choose my fucks
ingenious, civil, entire
to faint in the museum of
one’s breath is the greatest risk—
to go out
dressed as the animal
in your skin, close to the
place, state of life

Photo: Raymond Adams

Amanda Deutch is the author of five chapbooks including, most recently, Pull Yourself Together (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), the collaborative (with Barbara Henry and Rosaire Appel) Fit to Print (Harsimus Press, 2015), and Half Moon Hotel (forthcoming from Least Weasel Press in 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Revolver, Bone Bouquet, 6×6, Denver Quarterly, Ping Pong, Watchword Press, and Barrow Street, as well as in the anthology Manifesting the Female Epic, edited by Sarah Anne Cox and Elizabeth Treadwell and forthcoming from Lark Books. A graduate of Bard College, Amanda has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Brooklyn Arts Council, Footpaths (Azores) and The Betsy (Miami). Born and raised in Manhattan, she now lives in Brooklyn and curates Parachute Literary Arts.

This poem appeared in Box 
of 
Sky: Skeleton 
Poems B.O.S.S. (dusi/e–chap 
kollectiv 
project, 2009)

HIV Here & Now Contributors
Cento for 35 Years of AIDS I

What is ever truly without a breath of foreshadow?
In the mirror, I was going to tell you the story
of a friend who died, but he was not my friend;
he let me tell you about my friend.
I give my cousin my hand & think:
brushed late nights on paper,
so many candles—white fat columns.
A few days into my last trip home,
in the narrow elevator we shared,
membranes meet, my outside and yours, my cell is an ocean.
In my most recent future, I am young & beautiful & dead—
one joy one rock one fight one song one noun one shirt.
Remember the first house you can remember
with the certainty theologians claim for the salvation worked by Christ.

This poem borrows lines from the first ten poems published on the HIV Here & Now website. Poets include Michael Broder, Julene T. Weaver, Merrill Cole, Sarah Sarai, L. Lamar Wilson, Joan Larkin, Risa Denenberg, Steven Cordova, Eileen R. Tabios, Joseph Osmundson, Danez Smith, Daniel Nester, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Patrick Donnelly.

Chad Kenney
Blue

Neon pink taxi
door slams
shutting out the heat and humidity
settling in the back seat
starring blankly out the window
the foreign landscape
my temporary home
passes unnoticed—
though absently unaware
through the gap between us
catching just a glimpse
through the rear-view
the driver’s features
almost profile
taut skin over prominent
forms; orbital ridges
nasal folds
temporal bones
cheek and chin
all in sharp relief—
at the wheel the wrist
protrudes
the sleeve
drapes as cloth on a line
veins stand out boldly
on the gripping hand—
aware
not to stare
just glancing back
to see the fuller man –
eyes appraise
examine closely quickly
all available form
at the familiar
brown skin aside—
a flash of recognition
knowing
understanding
reflected in the window
my own features—
we are one

“Oh my wasted face!
Do you scare people on the street
or just me?”

I am more frail
taking great care
not to fall into the street
before a taxi or hurtling
motor bike—
in the dim light
struggling
to see the broken sidewalk
which undulates along
haphazardly inviting a crash—
in a world so young
everywhere
old people are seemingly
left behind by cells
and text messaging—
as the pace is fast
the language sings along
so foreign to my ear
rapid-fire staccato
all lacking comprehensible form—
I am isolated by my age and language
largely ignored by everyone
but the street vendors
who desire little more
then to sell or dismiss me
as not a consumer of their goods—

devalued—
I am silent
I am alone

Chad Kenney received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Washington and finished a graduate degree in social work at Denver University. An AIDS activist since 1985, Chad has lived with HIV and AIDS for 30 years.

This poem appeared in Cornbread, Fish and Collard Greens: Prayers, Poems & Affirmations for People Living with HIV/AIDS (AuthorHouse, 2013), Edited by Khafre Kujichagulia Abif.

Jacob Hardt
Tenderloin Prayer

Sometimes I wonder if heaven can hear me
I whisper my prayers into the sky, breathe the silence
await the word, but the only sound is something like
raindrops, divine tears touching everyone
everywhere sadness echoes through the land,
hate claims the heavy air like an evil, bloody fog
nightmares fill my lungs and the same damned demons
carry me from dreams into the light of day I wake up screaming
Across the rivers of the wealthy your children are dying of thirst
A mutant plague threads a quilt stretching longer than the most ancient rivers
twisting, bending, winding around gnarled victims then crushing them like play dough
the shapes of the shamed shunned undesirable
I am trapped here wearing the 21st century scarlet letters
lost in this maze of places, faces, some sad
some angry or confused, most just gone mad
from fear of things that hurt enough to hide
frightened children beneath the urine stained stairwells, jail cells,
stuck inside these tenderloin hotels. Now I’m wired taut and stung and
here on these tar stained tire-treaded streets people lie in rows
piano wires waiting to be struck for song or glory everybody wants more
Across the river the town crier cries two a.m. and all is well
But he’s another dope fiend! looking to heaven
and I wonder if god listens to prayers from the Tenderloin.

Jacob Hardt was born in Grand Junction, Colorado, but grew up on Santa Monica Boulevard  in LA and Polk Street in San Francisco. Working with the AIDS Office of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Jacob spoke on behalf of the Wedge Program, the first HIV educational program in existence that brought people with AIDS into classrooms (the program ran form 1988 to 2002), and Health Initiatives for Youth (Hi-Fy), an agency that provides health workshops for at-risk youth throughout the San Francisco Bay Area (his poetry and photographs have appeared in Hi-Fy’s Reality Magazine). Jacob currently lives in New York City where he pursues writing, painting, and photography.

This poem is not previously published.

Noah Stetzer
Shadrach

But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?
—Daniel 3:15

Tied at my mouth, tongue knotted with my tongue,
this stone this knife this bitter herb—older
than Easter with rusty thumbnails digging
into the skin on the sides of my chest—
exhaled stale breath into my lungs, pushing
sand and hot and grit inside inflating
until I hovered halfway between floor
and ceiling my lips blistered with cold sores.

When two doctors cut into my chest—one
on each side, at the same time with scalpels
ignoring my clenched-teeth closed-mouth screaming
as they shoved plastic tubes into the space
outside my lungs reversing the collapse—
the air—cool water—at last, filled me up.

Noah Stetzer is a graduate of The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He has received scholarships from the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers and from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He was a winner of 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award for Poetry and the 39th New Millennium Award for Poetry. Noah’s poems have appeared/are forthcoming at Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Nimrod, James Franco Review, The Good Men Project, A&U Magazine, The Collagist, The Volta, Tinderbox, and Phantom Press. Born & raised in Pittsburgh PA, he now lives in the Washington DC area.

This poem is not previously published.

Susan Brennan
Ode to Turquoise

I always forget what that rock is supposed to mean
Blue shock like a bit of ocean lost in the desert

Desert as in once a mountain of rock shaved down
By hundred year storms, dying species, erosive heat

Deserts with their secrets
Bones, cactus fruit, shivery lizards

Even bolts of river that they weep up unexpectedly
Like when your own bodily flood

Seeps down the back of your throat
And you taste it. Part salt. Part sweet.

And what rock is that from?
In the middle of the night

In the middle of a divorce – what treachery –
I hauled heaps of my belongings

To the doors of a church. I left them there and
In one box, my mother’s turquoise jewelry

Thick heavy 1970’s silver flaked with greening blue –
Who can carry everything from one life through to another?

And oh, how she loved those earrings, that necklace
She should have been buried in those charms

Emblems of her desire to see Arizona
To tie a knot with some clipped bloodline.

To meet, she imagined, a wilderness
Of Native Americans hammering out bits of sky

Until chips shuddered down from clouds
And lumped like that in the sand.

How I knelt, lost and lost like a wave
Frozen in its dictated motion

How I held out the little box to the night air
There was a desert in that box

A willful dust, so I laid it down in a bed of grass
At the feet of a stone faced Hail Mary

Susan Brennan is the author of numinous (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Drunken Oasis (Rattapallax Press, 2011). She curated poetry programming at Wilco’s Solid Sound Music Festival at MASS MoCA, and is staging her poem about George Seurat’s last days.  She has written film scripts, a 1 million hit plus award winning web-series and pitched film stories, premiering at Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals.  See what she’s up to at www.tinycubesofice.com.

This poem is not previously published. In fact, it was written expressly for The HIV Here & Now Project. Thank you, Susan.

Francesca Lia Block
poet l.a.ureate

my lover is los angeles
like this city i haven’t even begun to know all of him
he’s as far away as inglewood from the san fernando
valley where i grew up
burning my skin in the smogged sun
enticing as that fallen star skyline as glamorous untouchable
and yet i’m touching him
curled up naked against the cellphone in his back pocket
“calm down” he tells me “breathe”
cradling my neck in his hand holding me so i can see us
he’s the dodgers he’s a palm tree
he’s the mountains surrounding me
that brutal sun
and a large dark sea waiting at the horizon to engulf
and cool
i get lost on his freeways
his lights blind me doubling my vision
red green and yellow blurred by cataracts in my eyes

i see a rainbow on the 405
a house with room for everyone
there are little children dancing all around us
trees are inexplicably purple
sky defiantly pink
music in the hillsides
and wild animals roaming the periphery
a drunken girl wandering the underworld looking for her orpheus
she’ll find him if it kills her
all she has to guide her
are her words

Francesca Lia Block is the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award winning author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, including Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books and her most recent novels, The Elementals and the psychological thriller Beyond the Pale Motel. Francesca has published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock, Bullett and Rattle among others. She teaches fiction workshops at UCLA Extension, Antioch University and privately in Los Angeles. Learn more at www.francescaliablock.com.

This poem appeared on Love in the Time of Global Warming.