Risa Denenberg
I am not at risk
Today I am not at risk.
No one touches me now. It is my own choice. Or is it?
Was I ever at risk?
If you count the times I shot meth.
If you count all of the unprotected sex I had with guys when I was living with my girlfriend but trying to get pregnant.
If you count all of the times I started IVs in the emergency room without wearing gloves.
If you count the six years I provided GYN care to HIV-positive women in the South Bronx.
I could tell you about the time I got chlamydia in my eyes, since gloves don’t protect eyes.
Gloves only give the illusion of protection.
If you count all my losses, I am at risk.
I am at risk as long as there is an epidemic.
As long as people give and take viruses through acts of love or sex or healthcare or IVDU or violence.
We live in a world of illusions when we deny risk.
I live in this world.
I am at risk.
Risa Denenberg is a working nurse practitioner and poet. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, a small independent publisher of poetry by lesbians. Her collection slight faith is forthcoming in May from MoonPath Press.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem was written in response to our prompt from April 2, “Write a poem about being at risk for HIV infection in 2018.” Denenberg makes great use of anaphora in this poem—the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses (“If you count”). Write a poem that uses anaphora. For some examples of anaphora used in poems, the Poetry Foundation suggests Paul Muldoon’s “As,” William Blake’s “The Tyger,” and much of Walt Whitman’s poetry, including “I Sing the Body Electric.” They also recommend Rebecca Hazelton’s essay, “Adventures in Anaphora.”