Dustin Brookshire
HIV Barbie

Mattel never placed her in circulation.
Barbie doesn’t understand why Cuba & Belize
require HIV testing for visitors staying
more than 90 days. Being older
than 15, even though she doesn’t look it,
she would have to submit to testing
in Australia. Barbie gripes to Ken:
Who wants to go to Cuba?
Belize! Well, what do they have to offer?
And who cares about Sydney
and that damned Skywalk?

Barbie can’t comprehend the fuss.
She has no worries of bleeding cuts
or scrapes or sharing needles.
(Just say no to drugs, Barbie shrugs.)
Barbie doesn’t even have blood
nor openings for necessity or pleasure.
No orifice means none—ask Ken,
the fact often makes him blue.

With her box comes an information sheet
dispelling myths of how HIV is transmitted:
You may safely share a cup with Barbie.
You may safely wipe away her tears.
Meds will not be needed,
which makes Barbie wipe her forehead.
How would she take the pills anyway?

She sits tucked away deep within a Mattel closet.
Infectious Disease Doctor Ken takes care of her,
even though her body will never age,
never having to worry about blood work every three months,
or having to tell friends, family, and fans she’s infected.
They’d only want to know how she managed to contract HIV.

Dustin Brookshire is a poet and activist living in Charleston, SC. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Whiskey Island, Assaracus, OCHO, Oranges & Sardines, Shape of Box and other publications. Dustin is the author of To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Find him online at dustinbrookshire.com.

This poem appeared in Assaracus.

Jon Riccio
The Poet as Fluidphobe

EDITOR’S NOTE: To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we have included it as a PDF that will open in a separate tab when you click on the title below:

Jon Riccio, The Poet as Fuidphobe

Jon Riccio received his MFA from the University of Arizona. His work appears or is forthcoming in Booth, apt, Cleaver, Redivider, CutBank Online, Qwerty, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He serves as a contributing interviewer at The Volta Blog.

Cyan James
the safety of strangers

can I kiss?
can I kiss it?

what if a virgin?
what if in the ass?

are you—?
are you wearing a—?

if precautions?
In case of Love?

if I preach?
if I practice?

if every time I ask?
if every time I trust?

if lucky dice?
if Russian roulette?

If I’m cynical?
If I’m celibate?

if I stop being a Samaritan?
if I start caring about safety?

if willpower?
if a vaccine?

now?
…yet?

Cyan James’s work has appeared in The Account, The Harvard Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Arkansas Review and other journals. Her work has been awarded three Hopwood prizes. She earned her PhD in public health genetics from the University of Washington and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She currently works in health policy while also writing short stories, essays, poems, and a novel.

Charles Jensen
Disruption

For years we’d been
rapt in each other,

the way love is; corrupted
in the sense errors were made,

errors we could not
call such until they’d

passed us like a car driving
too fast for conditions,

the kind you’d see
three miles ahead wrapped

around a tree trunk,
tender as child and mother,

love in the way one shape
defined the other. Disruption

is the pulling apart of two
dependent lives. A rupture

but I didn’t know it until it was
too late. Everything we’d placed

inside those years spilled out
like blood escaping from a vein.

Love, my friends, should never
be entrusted to the heart, whose job

is to push away the only thing
the world will ever offer it.

Charles Jensen is the author of The Nanopedia Quick-Reference Pocket Lexicon of Contemporary American Culture (MiPOESIAS Chapbook Series, 2012) and The First Risk (Lethe Press, 2009), a finalist for the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His previous chapbooks include Living Things, winner of the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon (New Michigan Press, 2007). A recipient of an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Charles’s poetry has appeared in BLOOM, Columbia Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Field, The Journal, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. He lives in Los Angeles.

This poem is not previously published.

Mariel Alonzo
on pork and camellia

as if by cutting the meat
you release its flowers—

frail parallel lines
leaping through

a cliff & graze
at sedimentation

crashing lightweight
on plastic chopping

boards—hymn of fracture
wings, quiet

pornography of marble
pushed into

a grinder—
whine & gristle
of gunmetal
& mechanic

song of pre-germination,
see the veins

of a hummingbird’s jaw
bulge, nectar sluicing

through its hollow—

behind the knees, soft
armpit & elbow

in pulse,
stretch marks betraying
ripeness

as each tendril claws
to form a nest,
peppered & salted

& palmed, laid
to rest in antiquity

tattooing prisons
on flesh,
a blooming

to baroque petals
of rain, unsalted, as it hits

the murk of flood, hissing,
how quick you took
me to heaven

and left me there.

Mariel Alonzo’s work has appeared in Softblow, Toasted Cheese, Tower Journal, Santa Clara Review, blackmail press, and other journals. Her poem “On Pork & Camellia” was selected by Tarifa Faizullah as an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry.  Mariel was a finalist for the 2015 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest and the 2015 Winter Tangerine Awards. She hails from Davao, Philippines.

This poem appeared in The Adroit Journal.

Ken Pienkos
Three Poems

Side Street

Side street call my attention
away from the brooding mind’s
path of tedious Tuesday.

Tree-lined and linear as
kittens and mirrors stopping

the tension. This is how the loss wears
in a moment there, to a

side view open.
Relieving vistas,

and in its range, rather
strange yet conversant.

Hollywood Home

There are three to five riding
at two and the air feels

like there is no hurry for a few
miles, until after Washington Boulevard.

Middle school faces fill the seats
and the aisle with a post learning barb and the

air smells like washed chicken
skin and Downey, standing room only.

Hold tight to the skeleton of bars
that is the frame of Jonah’s whale.

At Fairfax and Olympic there is Union
Pawn Shop in Little Ethiopia,

Intermediate Algebra, Jansport backpacks,
braces and hoodies as the city roams.

You have been chosen the Immortal
Instruments, City of Bones by this

whale. Free STD check dot org. Fairfax
and First safety please watch your step,

pull cord for the next stop to Baba
Sale Congregation fear of god.

In Oakwood stretch it all the way
to the back of the bus.

Where have you been all of my
life bubblehead near Sunset.

Hollywood and Vine by the way of
the nursery take this whale dead-home.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? – James Thurber

Look me over
Take it all in
The veins in my hands
The spots on my skin

See the spirit in my eyes
Note the power
Of my calves, lean
Well taught.
Life in the second half
I intend no surprise

See the spirit in my eyes
Then walk away.

I remember you.

Ken Pienkos is a former public library director from rural Pennsylvania with BS and MLS degrees in Library Science and a 2009 Library Journal/ALA “Mover and Shaker” Award. He recently completed the MFA Creative Writing Program at Antioch University in Los Angeles where he is currently the Reference & Instruction Librarian and on the Management Team of the University’s online writing program, inspiration2publication.com. Ken and his family live among the potatoes in a lettuce crisper at their Los Angeles home. He performed a solo one-act at Skylight Theatre and joins Queerwise LA in spoken word readings. Pienkos has been living with HIV since December 1985.

These poems are not previously published.

Gazelle Mba
Ways of making love: list them

Because I do not know
How. Because I am a virgin. Because
There is a flower couched
Uncrushed within me. Because
All I know about sex is a lie,
A bloodletting
A vampire’s bite.

A boy
Bends his head
Against iron railings
Closes his eyes,
Feels the dick of another boy.
Fear a relic, a wooden cross,
Holy water, held in a chalice.
I didn’t know his name,
Only, that our town said
What to do with him?
Did he want it, or not?

You, kind doctor
Walk slowly,
With the wish of bursting
Through walls.
My mouth parting for you
Like the red sea
You say to me open
And I open. Your words
A magic key.
I still draw hearts
On Valentines Day,
Colour them red.
Pick candy out,
From gaps, in my teeth.

Gazelle Mba has twice been named a Foyle Young Poet of the Year and edits for the literary journal Polyphony H.S. Gazelle hails from Abuja, Nigeria and studied at Clifton College, Bristol, UK.

This poem is not previously published.

Colin Dardis
Two Poems

A Finger Scar

Crescent shaped and reddened
as a dying sun, dark with healing;
caught on the edge of a broken brick.

Skin and immovable objects do not gel.
My skin is meant elsewhere, given over
to her blood-rush of tenderness.

I would not recommend another treatment.

Temperatures

A stranger messages you to say
that a mutual friend has passed away:
how do you react: with the truth?

That you never really knew them, only shared
a love of poetry, nothing else, mere grams
towards the total weight of human relations.

Tell me that you don’t expect comfort,
just recognition of a grief from someone
who cares enough, despite the distance.

Colin Dardis is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2016, and currently an ACES ’15-16 recipient from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. His work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK, and the US. His work has won competitions with Glebe House Harmony Trust 2015, Fun Palaces #WriteScience 2015, and Edit Red Writers’ Choice Award for Poetry 2006. Colin is also the founder of Poetry NI and online editor for Lagan Press. Learn more at www.colindardispoet.co.uk.

These poems are not previously published.

Kathleen A. Lawrence
Five Abecedarians

Mingle

—abecedarian

Albeit
betrothed,
cads
digitize
eHarmony,
fishing
girls.
Hook-ups
imitate
JDates
Kindle-ing
LIKES.
Match.com
neophytes
OkCupid
passion
queens.
Rapid-firing
swipes
Tinder
unanimous
virgins
waiting
X-tian
youth.
Zoosk!

Male Gaze

—abecedarian

Angling
bros
cavort
determined,
emboldened,
fixing
gaze.
Highly
impressionable
Joes
keenly
learn
machismo.
Nettlesome
oafs
perverse
quotients,
replenishing
sexism.
Tongues
urge
veracious
wagging.
‘Xuberantly,
yang/yin
zygotes.

Breasts and Below

—abecedarian

Apple-round
bountiful
C-cups
dish
elegant
fragrances.
Goosebumps
hide
inside
jittery
knickers.
Leaded-crystal,
martini-glass
nipples
opaquely
pressed like
quaint
raisins.
Silky,
thundering,
unbridled,
violet
waterfalls
exceed
yards of
zenith.

Muscle Men

—abecedarian

Anxious, ass-
bare, buff,
chiseled chest
defies density.
Eagerly exposed,
fantastically fake,
gargantuan gargoyles,
hurly-burly, hunchbacks
imbibing in
jolty juices.
Kneading knots,
leathery ligaments,
mountainous muscles
newly nourished,
obnoxiously oiled,
pumping pecs.
Quickly quartered,
raised rock-
solid, shredded,
tanning-bed-tanned and toned,
underwear uniform,
vigorously vitamined.
Wide-eyed wimpy
XX examiners
yell, “Yo,
zamos zack!”

Music Menu

—double abecedarian

Apple pie is like jazz,
But peach cobbler is country.
Coffee beans are my aubade, strong aroma, AM radio fix.
Dirty rice, my bluegrass wow.
Electronica scatters notes like puns spatter improv.
Folk feels like peanuts in the shell, salty and impromptu.
Green apples are my “body electric” fruit.
Home is all purples, lavender and lilac singing the blues.
Irises swing in glorious eggplant robes, my gospel choir.
Juicy Zoloft-sized raisins soothe me like a tranq.
Kumquats tingle, effervescently fizzing like pop.
Legumes I eat carefully and seldom, like techno,
Mostly while craving a familiar musical cinnamon bun.
Nose pinned, I nibble navy beans, trying not to look glum.
Olives are steadfast and necessary like classical.
Peanut butter is snappy punk with chocolate rock.
Quiet psychedelic music swirls the pools that frame the Taj.
Rap is best with a frozen margarita in a limo jacuzzi.
Sweet tea, my tradition, my standard, my Souza march.
Toasted cheese, buttery and smiling like soul songs, smooth and big.
Ukuleles bring the islands as piña coladas cool me off.
Victrola tone arms skim the notes of big band, swing dance,
While grandkids eat pizza to a garage band,
eXpecting dessert’s fireworks to shimmer and arc.
You’ve got to leave room for whipped cream and strawberry rhubarb.
Zydeco nightcaps end the evening with Dr. Pepper and vodka.

Kathleen A. Lawrence is a fairly new poet. She especially likes the challenge of the abecedarian and has focused most of her poetry-writing efforts on this form. The series above constitutes Kathleen’s first poetry publication. She is an associate professor of communications studies at the State University of New York (SUNY), Cortland, and has served as Multicultural and Gender Studies Director and as Coordinator of Women’s Studies. Her publications to date have been in academic and scholarly venues, including the articles “The Barbeque on the Mount” (Corporate Advocacy, 1996), “Government as Plausibility Base: The Tactical Interpretation of Violence” (World Communication, 1991), and “New Barbie May Not Shape Up” (The New York Daily News, 1997).

These poems are not previously published.

Lisa Brockwell
Ode to snow falling on the YWCA, Kemplay Road

The first time is rarely so good. In bed
with a book in my warm, clean room,
the paint still fresh and white; I was not a woman in love,
I was someone fallen off the back of the love truck.
That’s when I saw it: snow falling on my day-to-day life.
Nose to the double glazing I looked over the back,
where all the flat conversions in this block
relaxed and took their corsets off—
concrete corrals of rubbish bins,
disused sheds, bags of ancient potting mix.

Each forgotten thing now seemed to glow,
like a scene from an Edwardian Christmas card,
the ones sent by my great-aunts. This is England,
I would think, running my nine-year-old fingers over
white glitter, a horse-drawn carriage dusted like mint cake,
the newly invented middle-class glimpsed though a lit window,
a family happy under their tree. I longed to be inside
that room, no one screaming, no one going under.
Everyone so nicely dressed, their faces raised
to the glass in old-fashioned wonder.

This room was the gift of some distant benefactress.
I wore it carefully, daring to believe the sheen
of it against my skin. I had searched the phone book
for somewhere to live and found, in Hampstead,
a street oblivious with wealth, harbouring this hostel
for young women: newly arrived from the Commonwealth,
like me, or trailblazers from Poland, one girl from Lancashire
and one from Scotland. A double row of doorbells, each one
mothering a name. A tall girl from Jamaica took three stone
steps in her stride and opened the door with her own key.

The morning light strengthened slowly, into something
almost holy; the snow kept falling, coating everything
with silence, a softening. I sat and watched
until all I could see was singing in understated
harmony: rooftops plated with marzipan,
trees in elaborate lace, the path pocked
with a killing cold; so beautiful to be inside.
No roses in my room, I couldn’t afford them, yet.
But the snow was my best advocate, there is beauty in waiting,
it lightly said. Meanwhile, this window is yours.

Lisa Brockwell is the author of Earth Girls (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016). She was born in Sydney, spent a large chunk of her adult life in England, and now lives on a rural property near Byron Bay, on the north coast of New South Wales, with her husband and young son. Lisa has worked as a communications consultant in the HIV/AIDS community sector and for the pharmaceutical industry. She has travelled extensively in Europe, North America and a bit in Asia, for business and for love. Her poems have appeared in The Spectator, Australian Love Poems, The Canberra Times, Eureka Street and Best Australian Poems (2014 and 2015 editions). Learn more at www.lisabrockwell.com.

This poem appeared in Earth Girls.