James Diaz
The Sweetest Damn Slice of Pie
—For Kevin
He stands at the door
bandages wrapped around
the bloody sores on his harms
asking for a ride to the supermarket
but that isn’t how I remember him best
I remember him like this;
we’re standing outside waiting
for an NA meeting to begin
people giving me shit
because of the bright
flashy colors of my funky looking shirt
“don’t listen to them James, if we were in Miami right now
you’be the best dressed guy in the room,” he tells me
and later at a pizza parlor
he turns to me and says
“your Dad is simply one of the best human beings I know”
on that ride to the super market
along the heat hazy southern highway
he apologizes for the state he’s in
for the bandages
“don’t apologize for being sick Kevin,” my Dad says
before leaving the store he spots
the sweetest looking box of pie,
“my Doctor says I can’t have this stuff,
but damn this looks so good,
but I ain’t got the money for it either”
my Dad buys the pie for him
and as Kevin stands at the door one last time
something like a bit of joy
even if ever so small
flashes in his eyes
the next day news comes
he died during the night
“I’m really glad I bought him that pie,” my Dad says
he deserved something sweet
with all the hell he’s been carrying
back in the 90’s
Kevin had been one of the best addiction counselors in the area
until he developed AIDS and eventually relapsed himself
he was a figurehead in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous
when my father first got clean Kevin was his counselor in rehab
circle of life
come head to tail
who once held you up
now must be held up that way too
by you
a ride to the store
a box of pie
a little bit of sweetness the night before
the very last night in a long line
of dark nights that always seem like the last
and never are until they are
but this is how I remember him
the one who, when everyone else teased the shit out of someone
for something so small like a funky lookin shirt
tossed his cigarette in the hot southern air
and said “don’t listen to them,
if we were somewhere else right now
we’d be kings brother,
we’d be kings”
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor (along with Elisabeth Horan & Amy Alexander) of the anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2019). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and prison/confinement. His most recent work can be found in Moonchild Magazine; Occulum; Yes, Poetry; Drunk Monkeys; and Thimble Literary Magazine. He lives in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.
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Most poems on HIV Here & Now address AIDS among gay men. Fewer poems in this project address AIDS among women or bisexual men. Fewer still address AIDS in the context of injection drug use. Today’s poem addresses HIV/AIDS among those who inject drugs. Write a poem about HIV/AIDS in the context of injection drug use.