Poem 7 ± November 7, 2018

Julene Tripp Weaver
You Ask That Question: Isn’t AIDS Over?

No simple answer 		I speak from my heart
with deep intuition	like grass between my toes
on a hot summer day		quiet 	lying in a field
gazing at a blue sky 	with Columbus clouds

a stalk of wheat sweet against my teeth	this earth 
I love.	A promise to travel light 	to not need
wealth or glory 	to make a soft impact, 
to know beauty	on our worst or best

day	without makeup or stockings.	The raw 
material 	a day gone right 	with a garden to pick 
vegetables to chop	and a world filled with virtue	
no conclusions to rush to 	no easy answers	no cure. 	

No, it’s not over. 	But, you ask, everyone’s okay now, right?
I mean,	 people can live a full life. 	Yes, if you must 	 
end what is a much longer conversation, 	it is well enough
for some	but everything 	is not right.

Back to my original point 	there are no simple answers		
but let us 	watch a movie		escape into a video	
with its resolvable problems. 	 I will keep on 
living with this disease	stable, 		while we talk

and you	do not have it in your body 	we assume,  
and I understand 	you must pace yourself 
like I did when I learned	there is so much 	to know
but little 		we understand.	

 

Julene Tripp Weaver is the author of a chapbook and two full-length collections. Her latest, Truth Be Bold: Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction, and won the Bisexual Book Award for the Best Bisexual Poetry Book, as well as four Human Relations Indie Book Awards. Her work is online at The Seattle Review of Books, Voices in the Wind, Antinarrative Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, MadSwirl, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. Weaver is a psychotherapist in Seattle, WA. You can find more of her writing at julenetrippweaver.com.

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