Ramon Loyola
Prepping

tongue licks itself softly
on contours of arm neck
elbow hands fingers leaving
perfumed trail of petrichor

it’s only skin to sample
but he wants to taste
flesh with moist flesh

I’m PrEP-ing he murmurs
lips parted saliva streaking
with lust and urgency
I moan capitulation

groan desire to rival fantasy
but I waver in the dark
yet pull him closer
the subtlety of doubt

infuses my flushed face
I feel brush of moustache
on plump quivering muscle
wet muscle on dry muscle

ecstasy flows immediate
until apprehension subsides
until feather becomes sword
digging through narrow flesh

I’m not on PrEP I tell myself
I reach down as if to speculate
fingers make out real skin in
envelope of synthetic skin

I don’t feel the pain anymore
he knows how to prep me
to stoke uninhibited fire within
without bitter medicine
with certainty of hard love

it’s only flesh to taste
but he wants to keep
skin with safe skin

Editor’s Note: PrEP stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, a regimen of two HIV-inhibiting drugs in one pill taken once daily by HIV-uninfected people to prevent HIV infection. “Prepping” can also refer to the process of cleaning the rectum to prepare for receptive anal intercourse, also referred to as “anal douching.”

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 poem that dramatizes the moment of HIV risk activity, as today’s poem does with its portrayal of a sexual encounter without condoms. Remember that HIV can be spread not only through unprotected anal or vaginal intercourse, but also through sharing needles to inject drugs; from HIV-infected mothers to fetuses or newborns during labor, delivery, and through breast milk; and during occupational exposures such as needle sticks from HIV-infected patients to healthcare workers.

Michael Broder
Love Story

What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
—Erich Segal

What can you say about a 25-year-old—
man, woman, boy, girl, mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin
who died
who was beautiful and brilliant
who loved Lou Reed, David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Liza (With a Z) Minnelli, Prince, Blondie, Juice Newton, Kurtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Who loved me
Who fucked me
Who infected me
Who was infected by me
This was our love story
This was our life, our love, our rock and roll—the summer of sarcoma
That was then
This is now: “Why do America’s black gay and bisexual men have a higher H.I.V. rate than any country in the world?” (Linda Villarosa writing in The New York Times, Pride Month 2017)

What can you say?
What can you say?
What can you say?

Write a fucking poem
Write a fucking poem
Write a fucking poem

I’m warning you, if you people keep this up
I’m going to have to start writing poems again

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 when they exchanged their vows under a chuppah quilted by Schneiderman’s mother, Robin Fromme Schneiderman, in a ceremony presided over by Schneiderman’s father, David Schneiderman, in North Truro, Massachusetts, on June 3, 2004. (Broder’s mother, Lee Brecher Broder, 82 years old and too frail to travel, listened on the phone as Jason and Michael walked down a wooden slatted path from the hotel to the beach.) 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 poem that invokes a canonical love story, as today’s poem does with reference to the 1970 novel Love Story by Erich Segal (which became an acclaimed film starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal). Choose a love story from history, mythology, literature, film, or any of the performing arts (musical theatre, dramatic theatre, ballet, opera, etc.).

Steven Cordova
Poz Ken

HIV-Positive Ken—or Poz Ken—is way more woke
than his HIV-negative 1993 predecessor, Earring Magic Ken.
Earring Magic Ken came complete

with a purple mesh shirt,
a matching purple leather vest,
and the silver cock ring he wore out

and proud round his neck!
Everything about Earring Magic Ken screamed
I party! I can afford to party!

Poz Ken wants to make it less about
what he comes complete with
and more about what he doesn’t come complete with:

a healthy immune system,
an absent viral load,
a day without a script.

Thus Poz Ken allows himself to be sold
completely naked,
the better to show you—

the financially-hard pressed consumer—
that he’s unlike the various and sundry HIV-negative
Kens from back in the 90s—

Earring Magic
or Glitter Beach
or Total Hair Ken—.

which is to say Poz Ken
is not as ripped or as conventionally handsome,
but—here’s the best part—it is to say

Poz Ken doesn’t want you
to buy him anything, not even
a drink (as he’s several years sober).

No, Poz Ken doesn’t want you
to open up the holes in
your pocketbook,

or your soul. “No,
Poz Ken likes to say:
“You can’t buy love.

I just want you
to see me—me!—
Poz Ken!—

standing here—tall!
in a box!—smiling, staring,
staring, smiling.

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 addresses HIV through one or more pop-culture references, as today’s poem does with the Ken doll. For more inspiration, you can also read “HIV Barbie,” by Dustin Brookshire, which appeared on HIV Here & Now on April 5, 2016.

Dennis Rhodes
The Dead

Mark had done his best painting ever:
two gay teen lovers at Bethesda Fountain.

Bob had completed a novel, shopped it around.
I thought it was great but it’s in limbo now.

Danny’s legs were plagued with neuropathy.
The Joffrey will dance on without him.

It is a noble thing to die for one’s art—
to leave a life courageously unfinished…

David’s voice could move you to tears.
His pianist has taken home three Oscars.

Tony’s graffiti art fades with each new rain,
no one is around to touch it up.

Patrick crafted scarves so exquisite
50 were worn at his Celebration of Life.

Sondheim said it best: art isn’t easy.
It’s even harder for those left behind.

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 remembers artists, writers, performers, and other creative people who died of AIDS. This poem, paradoxically, makes us think of the many creative and inspiring people living with HIV today. Write a poem about one or more of them. For ideas and inspiration, consult these articles about Amazing HIV-Positive People in Plus magazine.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell
blue

i’ll offer you my mouth
my silent abject mouth
this awaiting state of
penetration this
disempowerment we
carry out daily like a
state of consensual
rape

everything comes down
to a mouth & saying yes
you may progress, you
may take me elsewhere
if you can excuse the
mess

push past & through
to my cold hard blue

receptive
i cannot speak
as you lift my belly
& thrust & burn
inside of me

¿ what is that sound
in the distance that
warns me not to be ?

here, you lick my back
the nape of my neck
reach to kiss my lips
but find my ear instead

i hear no language between
us, only sound: a muted TV
screen chills us into a static
silhouette as you carry out
your soliloquy of sex

i am blue
with you
inside of
me

i am uncertain of what this
will bring, how everything
comes down to a mouth &
three letters, the plus &
the negative: life is just a
mathematical equation

alone in an indigo sky of
my own despise i wait for
this to end

oh richard of york, is there
now a battle in veins as we
wait, afterward, to find out
if you were a big mistake

push past & through
cause me to bruise

i am blue
with you
inside of
me

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 includes colors. Today’s poem uses “blue” and “indigo,” and the phrase “oh richard of york, is there / now a battle in veins” is an allusion to a mnemonic for remembering the colors of the rainbow, “Richard of York gave battle In vain” (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).

Mudhillun MuQaribu
Fatalists

Mudhillun MuQaribu‘s work has appeared in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy as well as the anthology TRANS HOMO…Gasp!: FTM and Cis men on Sex and Love (Transgress Press, 2017 ), edited by Avi Ben-Zeev and Pete Bailey. MuQaribu keeps a blog about PrEP and is working on several writing projects including two novels. He works as an educator near Philadelphia.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a poem that uses a refrain. A refrain is a phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, often but not exclusively at the end of a stanza. Today’s poem uses the refrain “We were fatalists.” Another HIV Here & Now poem that uses a refrain (two refrains, actually) is Eduardo Moreno’s “My First Ball.” The Poetry Foundation provides a long list of poems that use refrains here.

Emanuel Xavier
Walking with Angels

—for Lindsay

AIDS
knows the condom wrapped penetration
of strangers and lovers, deep inside
only a tear away from risk

knows bare minimum t-cell level counts,
replacing intoxicating cocktails
with jagged little pills

knows how to avoid a cure thanks to war
how to keep pharmaceutical corporations
and doctors in business

AIDS
knows the weight loss desired by supermodels,
knows the fearless meaning
of a friends genuine kiss or hug
converts non-believers to religion and spirituality

comprehends loneliness
values the support of luminaries
smiles at the solidarity of single red ribbons

knows to dim the lights to elude detection
how to shame someone into hiding
from the rest of the world
to be grateful for the gift of clothing and shelter,
to remain silent,
holding back the anger and frustration

AIDS
knows that time on earth is limited for all of us
that using lemons to make lemonade is better than drinking the
Kool-Aid

but no matter how much you drink
you are always left dehydrated

knows working extensive hours
to pay hospital bills, the choice of survival
or taking pleasure in what is left of life

knows the solid white walls
you want to crash through and tear down
the thoughts of suicide in the back of your head

AIDS
knows the prosperous could be doing more
with their wealth
and that everyone still thinks it is a deserving fate—
for gays, drug addicts, prostitutes,
and the unfortunate children of such
born into a merciless world
of posh handbags and designer jewelry

knows how to be used as another percentage
to profit politicians
knows it doesn’t only affect humans but animals too, without bias —providing fodder for art
and something to be left behind

if there is a God
he has disregarded our prayers
left his angels behind to journey along with us
—none of us knowing exactly where we are headed

Emanuel Xavier, an LGBT History Month Icon, is author of the poetry collections Radiance (Rebel Satori Press, 2016), Nefarious (QueerMojo, 2013), Americano: Growing up Gay and Latino in the USA (QueerMojo, 2013), Pier Queen (QueerMojo, 2012), If Jesus Were Gay & other poems (QueerMojo, 2010), and the novel Christ Like (QueerMojo, 2009). He also edited Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press, 2008), Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry (Rebel Satori Press, 2011), and Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005).

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem personifies HIV by making AIDS the subject of verbs associated with human activity: knows, comprehends, values, smiles. Write a poem that personifies HIV. Try imagining what HIV things, feels, believes, and does. Where does HIV eat, drink, sleep, go to the bathroom, work, play? What does HIV wear? What is HIV’s favorite color, movie, song, cocktail? And so on. Let your imagination run wild (see how we just personified imagination there?).

Russell Jackson
Power Lines

The procession
runs parallel
with miles
of green corn,
black bird laden
power lines
and dry red
dirt ditches.
Another prodigal
son returned
to the cornfields
from San Francisco
or New York City.
Too young
to be dead,
locals shake
their heads.
Another mother
thinking—
It’s not natural
to bury my child.
Another father
sits at home
with Johnny Walker
boycotting his fairy
son’s funeral.
The obit reads
something about
losing his battle
with cancer,
but whispers
suggest it was
that “gay cancer.”
The pastor
the mother
finally found
is from three
towns over—
Episcopalian.
Her son
will be lowered
in a hole
fifty miles away.

Russell Jackson’s work has appeared in Donut Factory. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and an undergraduate degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Jackson is a co-editor of poetry and a blog contributor at South 85. He lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem once again addresses HIV without mentioning HIV. Rather, it refers to the funeral of a young gay man who died of AIDS (and it refers to “gay cancer,” a term used to refer to Kaposi’s sarcoma before HIV was identified as the causative agent of AIDS). Write a poem about HIV that does not mention HIV but that refers to a defining moment—a positive HIV test result, a routine blood draw for lab work, an opportunistic infection, an AIDS diagnosis, disclosing one’s HIV status to a friend, family member, or intimate partner, going on a date with a person who does not know one’s HIV status yet, etc. If you are a person with HIV, of course you are equipped to write such poems from your own experience. But even if you are person without HIV, you can imagine something analogous in your own life. Two poems from the HIV Here & Now archives that play with euphemisms for HIV are “Becoming Turquoise” by Roberto Santiago and “Virginia is for Lovers” by Nicole Sealey.

Marjorie Moorhead
Counting

My first real love
—not the puppy love of High School—
became my first real death
—different from my Grandmother’s passing—

and I had to really mourn and release,
before my own rebirth
—second (spiritual), after first (literal)—was possible.

Five years to say “good bye”
and then turn to my own
mortality.
Five years more before the seeds
of virus blossomed, “full blown.”

Ten years from onset of virus till
invention of (still imperfect) drugs
to treat it.
One good friend, gone
before he could benefit
from better drugs that came too late.
Three that formed “the cocktail” combo.

Countless, the ways this virus
steered my path.
Unquantifiable,
the sadness for those
who left too early.

Marjorie Moorhead‘s poem “Starlight in My Pocket”  appeared in the HIV Here & Now project annual run-up to World AIDS Day in 2017. Her poem “Wandering the Anthropocene” is included in the anthology A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017) edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson to benefit the Environmental Justice Foundation. Her poems will appear in the anthologies Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont,  Vol. 2 (Blueline Press, 2018) and in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Marjorie lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Today’s poem used the prompt about numbers from April 11. That reminds us of another fun way to organize a poem—letters of the alphabet. An abecedarian is a poem that uses the alphabet as its organizing principle. The most basic kind of abecedarian begins each line with a successive letter of the alphabet, like this poem by Randall Mann. But the alphabet can be used in other ways to structure a poem, as in this poem by Julia Alvarez. Write an abecedarian about HIV. Some possibilities include a day in the life of a person with HIV; names of HIV drugs; names of HIV-related opportunistic infections; names of famous people who are living with HIV or who died of AIDS.

David Groff
Alan, Undetectable, Dead at 54:

I hated Mahler’s 10th, channeled to completion
by some presumptuous hack.
What a miserable 40th you gave me,
attending me, my broken mirror,
tuneless beside me as they revived
the Beethoven-haunted master
who couldn’t bring himself
to surpass the genuine master and die.
Over my final decades I
stopped making music
or hearing it really,
indignant as I was at surviving,
my fingers troubled with nicotine,
cocaine. That night in Carnegie Hall
you were of little assistance
and now you have the nerve
to finish my sentence.
I am no Mahler but
no one will recall your
nearly rhymeless lines
though you did pick up the birthday dinner.
I ate a full plate of food that night.

David Groff is the author of Clay (Trio House Press, 2013) and Theory of Devolution (University of Illinois Press, 2002), a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle awards for gay poetry. He has co-edited three anthologies: Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), with Jim Elledge; Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (Alyson Books, 2010), with Philip Clark; and Whitman’s Men: Walt Whitman’s Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers (Universe, 1996) with Richard Berman. He completed the book The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood (Houghton Mifflin/The University of Minnesota Press, 1999) for its author, the late Robin Hardy. Groff  teaches in the graduate creative writing program at City College, CUNY.

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Here is today’s prompt

(optional as always)

Write a persona poem in the voice of someone with HIV. In today’s poem, the speaker, a person with HIV, happens to be dead, but that does not have to be the case in your poem. Moreover, 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). NOTE: This prompt is similar to the one for April 10, but in that case, the suggestion was to write a persona poem about a person receiving a positive HIV test result; here, we broaden the scope to living with HIV.