Raymond Berry
Harbinger
—For Robyn
The times my door kicked in
By you, the prophet
Predicting my death
Because I took it up the ass
Each time, I forgave
Until something triggered you again
This time, rage, because I agreed
With the Jacksons attending the BET awards
After Michael’s death
Telling me to shut up
That’s why you have AIDS
What’s that? my nephews asked
Ask your uncle
God is killing him, you said
How you really felt
That day in the hospital
Your prophecy finally happening
Your first words, a question
If I could share forks or straws
We’ll buy separate plates
I’m okay, I thought
Because you didn’t ask
Cabinets stacked with plastic
And other disposables
Like me, you said,
Used once and tossed away
I understood then
Why gay men didn’t tell their families
Because even in death
They knew
Loved ones, like you, my twin
Would take their hurt and load it
Raymond Berry is the author of Diagnosis (Wasteland Press, 2010). His poems have appeared in WarpLand, City Brink, Cactus Heart, Assaracus, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies To Be Left with the Body (AIDS Project Los Angeles, 2008), edited by Cheryl Clarke and Steven G. Fullwood; Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010), edited by Kelly Norman Ellis and ML Hunter; Reverie: Midwest African American Literature 2010 (Aquarius Press, 2010), edited by ; and Rust Belt Chicago (Belt Publishing, 2017), edited by Martha Bayne.
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Today’s poem explores the stigmatizing of HIV/AIDS within the families of people with HIV/AIDS. Write a poem about HIV/AIDS-related stigma.