Simply Rob Vassilarakis
Mortality and Legacy

I used to have my whole life ahead of me
Now at best my glass is half full
And I still thirst

I thirst in the desert
Of what I have to show for myself
For the moisture of a purpose yet to be discovered
All I can do is spit

I spit to un-chap lips dehydrated
Because for an addicted
HIV Positive
Homo
Of color
In America
There are already too many reasons to feel worthless

I fall back and observe shit
Judging you, judging me
Allowing myself to be taken to the places comparisons can lead

Depression is anger turned inward
So I write myself inside out

I write because it’s easier to express than it is to feel
I spit about my pain so someone else can hold it
For a little while
You see they mess with me
The moments spent dwelling on my past
But I can’t help it
I look back at a life
Full of uncertainty and lowered expectations
Thought out and impulsive choices
I swim in the ocean of my memories
I drown in the indigo of my pain
I am resuscitated by my refusal to die
Without creating a legacy to leave behind
As my virus and I walk hand in hand
Toward the dawn of our sunset years together

I wring my gut out in these poems
I wear my heart on lines refrained
I beat back my demons trying to keep them tame
Because I no longer get high to escape my pain
Writing is all I have to keep me sane
As thoughts in my brain
Grrrrrriiiiiiind against each other
Louder than any subway train
The only way to lower the volume
Is by allowing them to speak through the ink

I’m not really crazy about the shit I’ve been writing these days
So I stab my soul with my pen
I puncture through spiritual dimensions
Rolling my ballpoint against the surface of lives past
Scratching them I dig a little deeper
In hopes that what bleeds
Will leave
A profound sense of connection
For the ones who listen or who read

More than just tales of intrigue
I drop jewels
While claiming my place
Amongst those witches
Word players and speakers of truth
That have come before me
Planting seeds of poet trees
Bearing fruits of inspiration
For the ones who will succeed
My poetry is my legacy

Roberto “Simply Rob” Vassilarakis is a founding member of El Grito De Poetas all Latino poetry collective. He has appeared in Charles Rice Gonzalez’s Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD). Activist, youth mentor, role model, story teller, actor, poem scriber and weaver of dreams, Vassilarakis works as the Intake/Outreach Specialist for the El Faro Adult Day Health Center in East Harlem, a program that serves people living with HIV/AIDS, many of whom struggle with substance abuse and mental health issues.

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Deloris Dockrey
Fear, My Companion and Motivator

Fear is my constant companion,
Fear is my motivator.

Fear was there when I was molested as a child,
Fear was there in my guilt and shame,
Fear motivated me to say STOP!

Fear was there when I had my son,
Fear was there when I knew I was alone,
Fear motivated me to keep HIM.

Fear was there when I journeyed to a new country,
Fear was there as I ran away from guilt and shame,
Fear motivated me to succeed and ACHIEVE.

Fear was there when I became HIV positive,
Fear was there in my guilt and shame,
Fear motivated me to survive and LIVE!

Fear was there when I was rejected and unloved,
Fear was there in my guilt and shame,
Fear motivated me to find a new PATH.

Fear was there as I lay in a coma,
Fear was there in my regret and guilt,
Fear motivated me to go on LIVING!

Fear I have grown to respect you,
My guilt and shame are gone,
Fear remains, but fear motivates me to a LIFE—
A life well lived, a life of PEACE.

Deloris Dockrey is the Director of Community Organizing and New Jersey Women Advocacy Network (NJWAN) for Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, New Jersey’s oldest and largest AIDS service organization, where she directs public education, AIDS prevention and community action campaigns to raise awareness and encourage action to address the social crisis caused by HIV/AIDS. As a person living with HIV, Ms. Dockrey has a personal as well as professional interest in public health policies related to the HIV epidemic. She has trained and mobilized people living with HIV to advocate for policies that impact their access to care, treatment, support, and prevention services.

If you want to support the mission and work of HIV Here & Now, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Shen Haobo
Wenlou Village Accounts: The Mute Speaking

When we arrived there,
the mute’s family were holding a funeral,
as his mother died
of AIDS.

The mute saw us,
suddenly rushed out of the crowd,
holding our hands,
shaking them ceaselessly.
If he could speak
at that time,
he would have said,
Comrades,
you are here at last!

The mute stood in the yard,
surrounded by the mourners.
He guided them
to the coffin to kowtow,
while his eyes
never went away from us.
I felt the mute
wanted to speak.

The mute, holding his mute daughter,
walked towards us at the yard gate.
People followed him.
They seemed all to know
what the mute was going to say.

The mute and his mute daughter,
with a plop,
kneeled down before us.
He looked up at us,
one hand pointing to his own house.
Oh, I understood.
He was saying,
I’m really poor;
please give me some money.

I nodded,
drawing him to a corner,
pulled out a 100-yuan note from my pocket.
The mute shook his head
with a dismal look.

Oh, not enough.
I took out another 100.
The mute’s face turned more ill-looking
like an angry ninja
who would suffocate me.
He stared at me for a minute,
produced his hand crisply,
showing five fingers.

Mute, mute,
I clearly heard you speak.
The vicious voice –
Five hundred.
Don’t fucking bargain with me!

Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing

哑巴说话

我们去的时候
哑巴家正办丧事
母亲死了
因为艾滋

哑巴看见我们来
突然从人群中冲出
一把握住我的手
不停地摇晃
如果此时
哑巴开口说话
一定会是：
“同志
您可来啦！”

哑巴站在院里
被来吊丧的人们围着
带着他们
到棺材旁边磕头
但他的眼睛
一直没有离开我们
我感觉哑巴
想说话

哑巴拎着他的哑巴女儿
向站在院门口的我们走来
人们跟在哑巴后面
他们看起来
都知道哑巴要说什么

哑巴和他的哑巴女儿
咕咚一声
跪在我们面前
指着自己的屋子
抬头望着我们
哦，我明白了
他是想说：
“我家很穷
给我点钱”

我点点头
把哑巴拉到角落里
从兜里掏出100块钱
哑巴摇摇头
脸色十分阴郁

哦，嫌少
我就又掏出100块
哑巴脸色更难看了
像一个愤怒的忍者
令我窒息
盯着我看了一会儿
刷的伸出右手
亮出5个指头

哑巴哑巴
我分明地听到你在说话
那恶狠狠的声音
——“五百
少他妈讨价还价”

Translator’s Note: Wenlou Village is one of China’s AIDS villages, due to a 1991-1995 plasmapheresis campaign by the Henan provincial government. According to official statistics, there are 38 such villages in Henan Province. “Wenlou Village Accounts” is a sequence of seven poems written by Shen Haobo after his visit to the village in the early 2000s. “The Mute Speaking” is the final poem is the sequence, and this translation is not previously published.

Shen Haobo, born in 1976, is considered one of the most controversial voices among the new generation of Chinese poets for being both wickedly erotic and politically satirical in his poetry. His first collection, Great Evil in the Heart (2004), was banned and he went abroad for a few months to escape arrest. As the leading poet of the Lower Body group, he is the author of five poetry collections.

Liang Yujing grew up in China and is currently a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the Chinese translator of Best New Zealand Poems 2014 (Wai-te-ata Press) and the English translator of Zero Distance: New Poetry from China (Tinfish Press).

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Reuben Gelley Newman
& the Damage Done

Listening to Neil Young this morning, an unseasonably / warm weekend in February, quiet / month of fever / month of purification / fever fever fever I sit / “The Needle / &” / on repeat forever fever. I know that some / of you / don’t understand, but last night / I went to The 24 Hour / Plays remembering Spencer Cox / (over / 34 years since the discovery of AIDS) / yes, this is a fucking / poem about 00000000000000000000000000

I’m sorry.

Performed

by his friends. A tribute / for him. / A benefit, / but such a corporate word slivers / under my skin like the cold / under Spencer’s / sitting hard floor / in raincoat / of living / room / no clothes.

It was a memorial / love / and I / just / a witness, / a 17-year-old gay kid who has not yet seen / read / How to Survive a Plague / The Normal Heart / Rent / And the Band

plays on,

love,

it fucking plays on.

Reuben Gelley Newman’s poems appear in the Alexandria Quarterly, diode poetry journal, Indolent Books’ “What Rough Beast Project,” and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Teen Writing Journal. A participant in The Adroit Journal’s 2016 Summer Mentorship Program, he is 18 years old, hails from New York City, and is a first-year student at Swarthmore College.

If you want to support the mission and work of HIV Here & Now, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Bridget Langdon
Bruce Was More

Bruce was born in rural Illinois
Bruce was a handful
Bruce told the kids there were ghosts in his house.
Bruce was a genius
Bruce got bad grades
Bruce was a poet
Bruce was a prodigal musician
Bruce didn’t have the drive
Bruce drove across the country to see the Beatles
Bruce strived for normalcy
Bruce was a nonconformist
Bruce loved Julie Andrews
Bruce ran away
Bruce was afraid to come home
Bruce played in a band called the Jet Rinks
Bruce loved his mom
Bruce married a woman
Bruce gave the baby his name
Bruce divorced his wife
Bruce was gay
Bruce hitchhiked to California to join the revolution
Bruce hated Ronald Reagan
Bruce signed over rights to his child
Bruce did feel remorse
Bruce danced on a table in the Capitol Building
Bruce never considered the consequences
Bruce painted the U on the sign so it read “Onion Street.”
Bruce was witty
Bruce was concerned with the afterlife
Bruce took on a lover
Bruce took on many lovers
Bruce was in love by the end
Bruce took a needle
Bruce took an IV

Bruce’s material body died of AIDS.

Bridget Langdon’s work has appeared in Grassroots Writing and Research Journal, Sick Lit Magazine, and Dime Show Review.She has also been a guest reviewer for Whet [Lit] Journal and Grassroots Writing and Research Journal. Langdon is a second year master’s student at Illinois State University, studying in the creative writing program with an emphasis on creative non-fiction. She can be found on Twitter under the name @FormerAltruist. These poems are only a small part of a larger project involving her uncle who died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1986. Langdon writers, “For 30 years, Bruce’s identity has revolved around the fact that he died of AIDS, and my intention is to shatter those barriers.”

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Ethan J. Cole
A Conversion on Good Friday

Sick.
The worst flu
you’ve ever had.
But I knew
it was not
the flu.

The three hour vigil
I stared
and wondered
who was up there,
him or me.

In the midst of life
we are in death.
I led my flock
in prayer.

Seven sermons
I gave them
on seven words.
They knew not
I was the sermon.

So young, they whispered,
where did this man
get all this,
how can he know
anything of death.

Those bystanders
staring but not seeing,
the filth and fire
I now carried,
dividing up my life,
and that is what
my congregation did.

When will You take me down?
Let them lance me.
Now I am converted.
See what a load I carry.

Do not touch me.
I have not yet ascended.
Put your hand in my side
if you must,
but wear a glove.

Ethan J. Cole’s work appears in Calamus. Originally from western New York state, he lives in Florida with his two dogs, Amos and Betty Spaghetti. Cole was serving as a pastor when he became HIV-positive in 2008, in his mid 20s.

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Annie Bien
Dance Scene 1989—NYC

Take the F train to Manhattan to 23rd Street,
walk to Nineteenth Street between Fifth Avenue

and Avenue of the Americas—the map of North
South and Central Americas in the faces

of the dancers squeezing into the elevator, bubbles
of laughter, to the eleventh floor: Alina from Cuba,

Beatriz from Puerto Rico, Julio from Argentina,
Robert from Texas, Kevin from Massachussetts,

the motley modern dance ladies with unshaved
armpits, Mother Gaia thighs next to the sylphs

in pink silk ribboned toe-shoes grey plastic pants
to take off more sweat on already evaporated frames.

Ernie tells me—The word is don’t pick up the lettuce girl
too quickly or she’ll fart, and then you have to carry

her all across the stage with your head hid under her
skirt. He winks. Then Ernie, Jack, Harry, Greg, don’t come

to class anymore, I visit them in hospitals look at
their wan smiles, faces pale then dotted with lesions.

At One-Hundred and Fifty-Ninth Street in the Harkness
Pavilion, suitable for ballet dancers, I sit with John

wearing a New York City Ballet cap. He takes off
the cap and shows me the X and O circles on his head

marked for radiation. He holds my hand and weeps
—no tears—they’ve all dried now, Annie.

I remember him in class, long legs start at my waist,
in black tights and white t-shirt, Giacometti-slim

but elastic like a rubber band. He always says hello
calls my name like I’m his best friend in the world.

My mother—he says—won’t visit me, she doesn’t believe
in my illness. Sit with me, please.

We sit together. He dies alone.
I still see him, making semaphores with his legs, mid-leap.

Annie Bien is the author of Plateau Migration (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2012) and Under Shadows of Stars (Kelsay Books, 2017). Her poems and prose have appeared in a number of journals. Her translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts into English is supported by 84000, a division of the Khyentse Foundation.

If you want to support the mission and work of HIV Here & Now, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Janice Urbsaitis
“Mom, I’m HIV positive”

“Mom, I’m HIV positive.”
When I hear those words,
I want to grab all the best experts and latest practices,
to advocate for human rights and access to care,
and to reject HIV criminalization.
But most of all, I want to hold you close,
the way I did when you were little.
I want you to know
that you are loved
no less than you have always been
but more!
Your strengths can’t be taken from you–
You flash with energy even while standing still.
What are you most proud of about yourself?
Your kindness? Your courage? Your perseverance?
What’s your most difficult choice that you’ve had to make
to fulfill your destiny?
You’re still the best person to do this.
Sharing birthdays, pivotal moments and jokes
I honor your life.
Everyone’s read about it but experiencing HIV is different.
We can talk about it or we can
not talk about it.
We need to ask what you need and then really listen
with our hearts.
So, how are you learning to breathe again?
You have to know it’s possible.
There is always hope.
Everyone wants to know that we matter.
That’s an amazing gift to give–
People who show up for you.
We will get through this.
In everyone’s life, at some time,
our inner fire bursts into flame
by an encounter with another human being.
You cycle annually across South Africa
to spark understanding
for millions of men, women and children
living with HIV and AIDS;
opening the door for people to speak to one another,
kicking stigma out of a lot of fearful rooms.
Inspired by love your mission cannot fail.
What’s the best piece of advice you received
that you actually followed?
What does it mean to you to hear the truth:
You are a miracle come true for us!
Whose life was changed by you?
How many other lives does one life impact
that we never will know?
Never forget:
You matter!

Janice Urbsaitis holds an MFA from Syracuse University. She is a filmmaker, copywriter and editor. Learn more at cadwellmedia.com.

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Iris Lee
At the PWA Writers Workshop

We were sitting around the highly polished table,
the chairs a bit too low for writing in comfort.
The workshop should have ended but
no one wanted to leave. World AIDS Day
had come and gone and people were pensive.
Someone read his essay
about a woman he’d seen on the subway,
how he imagined her life of scratched records
played in a chilly room, snowy streets below,
which reminded someone else
of an old librarian he’d known,
cultured, well-traveled, alone but not lonely:
what he’d want for himself down the road.

Someone read his essay on art, money,
and how to save the planet
and we considered the concept of legacy:
In your last ten minutes on earth,
the proverbial summing-up moment,
what would you like to have left or done
for your lover, a rainforest, the kids on the block?
The essay writer had to leave to cook a pork roast
but we continued to talk, at the expense of writing.
That was o.k. This group’s already dealt with death.

A legacy, someone said, might be found
in the life of that old librarian, reemerging
through the writer’s words.
Another said he didn’t need to leave
a “big-L” legacy, just a few folks smiling.
One man’s legacy is another’s…. was the consensus.
We left it at that. The holiday party’s tonight;
we’ll meet again in January.

Iris Lee is the author of Urban Bird Life (NYQ Books in 2010). She leads a writers workshop at The Actors Fund. Say Lee, “This poem was begun several years ago as a prompt in the workshop, which at the time was devoted those in the HIV/AIDS community. Things have changed, but not enough.” Lee lives and writes in Brooklyn.

If you want to support the mission and work of HIV Here & Now, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.

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Ron Searls
Elegy for John B—

The count begins at eight hundred.

You stood upon my December porch,
It seems but three years ago.
The sun was bright with morning;
Camellias white and crimson gleamed;
Upon our door lay a wreathe you wove.
In top hat, morning suit, tails,
You could have stepped from a page of Dickens
As you met each guest with a carol clear.
O angel tenor, how you loved the song!
But I cannot hear it.
Is it cold time which battens up my ear?
Or do I only listen for the ghost
Of my own Christmas, my past?

The count is now six hundred.

Two summers ago, you dwelled with us,
My three children and my gardens
Were your care—all thrived
Within your hands—it was a time
Of violets, of water and of glee.
My son remembers how together
You two worked the plants in that
Garden which is gone.
We spoke of holly, azaleas, jade,
Phlox, ferns—I recall the
Meal you made even for me.
But I was wary, and like some
Secret vampire, squinted for
Signs of blood.
They did not know.

The count is now four hundred.

I saw you that last time, only a year ago,
As you worked once more, the garden.
I watched you with hidden eyes, peeking
From behind eyelids of guilt
Upon your wizening frame, as the sweat
Sheened your skin, as you gleaned
In the afternoon.
I noticed: As you moved,
Your muscles moved too clearly;
You were like some northern god
Whose magic armor had been tricked away
By a scheme of Loki;
You stood naked on a planet I dared not reach,
Etched by alien fire.
How could we both be on this one earth?

The count is now two hundred.

In the evening gloom I look
Out to the lamp post, by the water-oak.
You dressed it in jasmine, which only
Now has bloomed, belated gift,
So sweet, the florets pressed to my face
Summon dreams of Arabian nights—antique perfumes—
I breathe for you.

O that I were a Prospero, and my Ariel art
Command the raging tempest of disease
To speed you to an isle as full of song and sweet,
Forever, as this moment that you grew for me.
But my futile numbers cannot awake:
You sleep in the coma god’s arms,
Protected with implacable grace.

The count is zero.

Moonbeams alone alight—
I hear you son, my brother, my love:
The whip-poor-will
Voices requiem in the thickets of the night;
The funeral owl is your spirit’s flight;
Away it lofts, drifts, soars,
Leaves:—
This earthen, leaden, clotted heart,
Which longs, O, which longs,
For my lost, my John of flowers,
My forlorn, my John of songs.

Author’s Note: This poem was written in 1995, on the day John died. He was 26 years old. John’s partner was a friend of my wife’s. John was a florist and had a beautiful tenor voice. We had known he had AIDs for over three years and had hired him to look after our kids and take care of our gardens, until he was no longer able to work. The count mentioned in the poem is the John’s T-cell count.

Ron Searls’s poetry has appeared in The Lyric Magazine and has been been distributed to friends and acquaintances in a private edition. A recently retired software engineer, his last project was as co-founder of Nanigans, Inc., an adtech startup. Before he retired, he remembered that he hadn’t graduated from MIT, re-enrolled, and finished with the class of 2015.

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