Vernita Hall
Letter from P-town
Dear Gregory,
As Pop would say, I’m as happy as a faggot in Boystown—literally. ‘Cause that’s where I am! You and Richard would love it here. Nearly every passing face looks up and smiles. But they hesitate first, searching for—the welcome, I think. Acceptance. And with each shy, hopeful gaze I remember your funeral, your family’s faces, in that church with Richard—like they’d been sucking lemons and needed to spit.
I wish you had told me. I wish you had told me why in the hospital they let you smoke. I thought your nurse was kind because he was your kind. As if any alphabet infection could have ever changed my affection for you.
I’m trying to enjoy my stay here. Like you always said, you’ll be dead a long time.
Well, the gang’s almost all there now. You, Pop, Richard, Granny, Uncle Charlie. Mom says hi; she’s coming to visit soon. Keep the music hot, the beer cold, a seat warm for me, and the tab running. I’ve got all of you covered.
Always,
Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize for Poetry and of the Robert Creeley Memorial Award from Marsh Hawk Press; and The Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians (Moonstone Press, 2017), winner of the Moonstone Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems and essays have appeared in African American Review, American Literary Review, Atlanta Review, and Mezzo Cammin, among other journals. With fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center (sponsored by Indolent Books), The Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hall holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College and serves on the poetry review board of Philadelphia Stories.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem is an epistolary poem—a poem in the form of a letter. Write an epistolary poem on any aspect of HIV/AIDS.