Shawn Hatfield
Summer

Wendy wasn’t perfect and I didn’t want her to be.
I wasn’t perfect and I certainly didn’t strive to be.
I was sitting on the toilet
trying to think of something nice to write about her.
She was brushing her hair and doing her make up
next to me.
It always turned to sex.
Wendy and I
only turned each other on.
There was no emotional element.

I was completely astonished
by the way she moved.
She had large hips that swayed her ass back forth,
as she strutted her way across the floor.
I’ve never had someone grab
my crotch so confidently, and firmly,
as the way she did.
I gave her the best head and orgasms
she’d ever had.

In order to give an orgasm to a woman,
you have to fully understand a woman’s body.
Not just her pussy.
A woman’s mind is the most beautifully disgusting thing
I have ever experienced, and you must
treat it as so.
I ate Wendy’s pussy until she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She’d pull my head away after she came
9-10 times, catch her breath and say
“fuck me.”

Those words got my dick harder than a diamond.
We’d fuck for hours until I came inside of her,
causing her 30th and final orgasm.
Her tiny little pussy lips would
latch on and wipe her cum on my cock
as I slid out.
We did this 2-3 times a day,
everyday.

We stopped seeing each other eventually.
She told me that she didn’t
want me to come to her 30th birthday party.
I got drunk and decided to show up anyways.
When I walked in, Wendy and her family
sat at the dining room with
blank, dead, and confused looks on their faces.
Parents, siblings, friends,
and I man I’ve never seen.
He turned to her and said,
“Sarah, is this one of your coworkers?”

Who the fuck is Sarah? I was wondering.
Wendy stood up, holding his hand.
I noticed a ring on both of their
dry, crusty fingers.
“Yes,” she said, “he’s just picking something up.”
I panicked.
Turned around, opened, and shut
the large mahogany front door behind me.
I wasn’t sorry that I had lost something good,
but I felt bad for the
poor, clueless bastard.

I laughed a little bit as I stumbled my
drunk-ass home.
Mumbling out loud to myself,
“I didn’t even know her name.
I’ve been fucking another man’s wife for months,
and she’d been going by a fake name.”
She always came to my place.

When I woke up the next day
I had several messages from Wendy.
I listened to them.
She said she told her husband everything,
he kicked her out, and she was living with her sister.
I didn’t call her back, instead
I showed up at their house.

Her husband opened the door, swung,
and broke my nose all in one motion.
He drove me to the hospital.
On the way there he said, “The name’s Dan.”
“Tom. I’m sorry man, I didn’t know.”
“Yeah I know. Me either.”
After the docs realigned my nose
Dan took us to the bar.
He bought several rounds, wouldn’t let me pay,
and drove me home.
We stopped in front of my apartment complex.
“Get the fuck out of my car before I kill you,”
he said.
I nodded, got out, and Dan peeled away.
I stood outside for a moment, lit a cigarette,
and smiled a big cheese.
I finished it, turned around and started walking to the elevator.
Out of order.
I had 10 flights of stairs ahead of me.

By the time I was at the top,
I was sweaty, uncomfortable, and ready for bed.
Turned the corner and when I saw the apartment door,
Wendy was there waiting.

“Hi, my name is Sarah. Can we start over?”
I unlocked the door,
let her in, and locked it behind us.
When will I learn?

Shawn Hatfield’s poems have appeared in Culture Cult and Blognostics. He runs an indie record label and studio called Groove: Music Lessons + Recording, in Leesburg, Virginia. Shawn grew up in Northern Virginia and now lives in Hamilton.

This poem is not previously published.

Darienne Dickey
A Letter to Martin Shkreli

Dear Mr. Shkreli,
My Uncle Rodney turned 65 last week.
After he blew out the candles on his cake,
I watched him,
short of breath,
swallow a small white pill,
the same one that you say doesn’t work the way it used to
because it’s 62 years old.
But my Uncle Rodney just turned 65.
So please tell me,
Mr. Shkreli,
Mr. “I don’t give a damn about your HIV
because the only letters I care about are CEO,”
how exactly you calculated the price of human existence.
Tell me
how it felt to rip prescription bottles
from patients’ frail fingers,
how you managed to shove fear into their faces
to the point that they choked
and their throats tightened
until they would no longer be able
to swallow that tiny tablet anyway?
The fragile immune system that cannot overcome
the parasites
stand no chance against you either.
You are a disease all your own.
(Symptoms include
confusion,
nausea,
and even death.)
You beg for amnesty,
you make claims for the good of the cause,
you say you will fund research to help
without realizing
that these people
have had enough AIDS.
We call this the land of opportunity,
but your bank — I mean your health care —
proves that this is the land of privilege.
Americans sold human life before,
with contempt we call that slavery,
but now
Americans bottle human life and manufacture it
and you proudly call that pharmacy.
Forgive me,
Mr. Shkreli,
I know you’re a busy man,
but I’m writing this to ask you
if you would swallow your pride
in hopes of coughing up your humanity
because my Uncle Rodney’s life
is worth more than the 750 dollars
that you ask him to swallow
twice daily.

Originally from Bryan, Texas, Darienne Dickey is currently a senior at Texas A&M University pursuing a degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Sociology. She is also an Editor’s Assistant at Callaloo, the premier journal of African Diaspora arts and letters.

This poem is not previously published.

Tj Hoffman Duffy
Tattooed Tears

Tj Hoffman Duffy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (U. of Arizona Press), Multi Faith Pride Service of Tucson, The Fight Against SB 1070, the Poetry Message Pot Project, Persona, Timeless Voices, Genuine Article, and the Creative Writing Phoenix College Quarterly, among others. He has received a number of awards and honors for his work.

Glen Wilson
A Ribbon Red

(1) The Dark Room

I wait with my strip of hope
exposed, drowning in blue.
In the light an oily tape drips red.

As the chemicals develop, truth
appears, confirming the thumb
smudge of fear.

(2) CCTV

Closed circuit follows her like prey
through the black and white forest.
the uniforms watch, radio voices hiss
“keep an eye on a woman near the fountain”

She staggers through a crowd,
strangers part like a callous sea.
A mother drags her pram away
from this orphan child of trust.

The exits open without asking,
close quickly as she walks outside.

(3) Handheld Device

The red light is on, I try to focus
so the words are clear
but everything is restless,
my face is starting to pixellate already.

(4) Polaroid

Surrounded by white
in case I stretch out,
even after death a liability.
Should someone care to look
my red eyed stare is not my mistake.

Glen Wilson’s poems have appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Foliate Oak, Iota, A New Ulster and The Interpreters House among others. In 2014 he won the Poetry Space competition and was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry. Glen lives in Portadown, Co Armagh, with his wife Rhonda and children Sian and Cain.

This poem is previously unpublished.

LeVan D. Hawkins
I Gotta Dance

Head tossed back
Hands raised to the heavens
Beatific smile on my face

My body
Works
with the rhythm
Grooves
to the rhythm

People on the sidewalk
Frown and shake their heads
They don’t understand

I gotta dance

Can’t take no more sorrow
Can’t take no more meanness

If I cry
The Lord will have to call on Noah
If I yell
Buildings will crumble
And the population will run for cover
If I let go
My anger—
If I let go
My anger
My words will choke you
Till your tongue leaps
Out of your head like a cobra

I gotta dance

Can’t take no more frustration
Can’t take no more heartache
Can’t take no more

Death.

People are yelling
They don’t understand
I’m trying to stop myself from sinking—

I gotta dance!

Dance!
Dance!
Dance!

LeVan D. Hawkins is a Chicago-based poet, writer, and solo performer. His poetry has appeared in publications such as Spillway 10, Voices from Leimert Park, Best of Austin International Poetry Festival, InVerse Literary Magazine, San Gabriel Valley Poetry, and City of Los Angeles African Heritage Month Cultural Guide. He has read and performed at venues such as UCLA Hammer Museum, Highways Performance Space, the World Stage, Disney Hall Redcat Theater, Los Angeles LGBT Center, and the Henry Miller Library.   In Chicago, he has read at Links Hall, The Center at Halsted, Alt-Q Musical Festival,  Gerber-Hart Library, the Homolatte Reading Series, OUTspoken! and This Much is True Chicago storytelling series. He has received writing fellowships from Lambda Literary Foundation, Millay Colony of the Arts, and the Dorothy West and Helene Foundation.

This poem is not previously published.

Robert Hamberger
The AIDS Memorial

(for Clifford and Andrew)

Will you write our story? Do you want me to? You have to he said
no one but you can write it.
—Patti Smith, Just Kids

1.

Two bronze men in verdigris
unfurl from each other,
as if a red ribbon’s twist
crosses below their thighs,
their armless torsos, buffeted chests,
risen throats naked to the sky.

I circle this turmoil
within the sea’s sight:
two flown men caught.
Can I cast this net to haul you back?
Twenty years and nine years dead,
should I leave you in peace
or leave myself twice bereft?

Twenty years—
staccato as breathing, harsh
as recalling with no one to listen.
It’s ancient history. We’ve got it licked.
No one dies here; all those dazzling fairies
dated as neat moustaches and Bronski Beat.

2.

Clifford
where’s the triumph in such recollection?
Didn’t we finish this conversation
a lifetime ago? It started with your name.

We sat, two diffident eleven-year-olds
at joined desks. Bitten pencils,
dog-eared books, chewed-up spat-out paper globs
whizzed around us, missing their mark
in the chaos when the teacher left our class.
What makes two boys catch each other’s message?
I wanted to hear whatever you said next.

Arty teenagers, where’s the tape we made
of The Waste Land? Me singing,
you plink-plonking your secondhand red piano.
Arias and diminuendos
bloom before they dwindle into air.

You’re on the brink
of Art College, telling me you’re gay.
I never guessed: often a lag behind,
sometimes missing your point.

Then I’m married, preoccupied.
You sway in a chair bought to lull
our first baby, saying into silence
“I’ve got Aids”, correct yourself: “HIV.”

You and Andrew built your lives
as if glass might carry the sky.
Your brush, a thistle or fuchsia,
stippled each canvas.

Snail-shells and pylons,
cooling towers, peacocks and gasworks,
lily-pads, light-bulbs and half-moons
blaze from your farewell, celebrate
today across my walls. I rise to them
every morning. They sing your name.

Occasionally in dreams you’re well again,
your skinny diminuendo etched through me.
Once I lifted my toddler son
to your hospital window, where you waved
at each other. He had chickenpox, you shingles,
although I can’t remember how we were
protecting you, or thought we were.

The last time we spoke
I kissed your knuckles when you thanked me,
as though you’d become a prince.
The feather-breath you finished
before Andrew said “He’s gone”
led me weeping to the sheet
between your head and stopped shoulder.

These surging verdigris men
swirl from each other,
while Andrew twists roses through your wreath
My Funny Valentine and I recite Hopkins
at your funeral, stilled to a crowded hush.
My breath hovered until My own heart
let me more have pity on. The son I lifted
to your window has forgotten you.
I relinquish ash blown towards the tide.

3.

Andrew
where’s the rescue from such memories?
They smack like waves, relentless
in the plunge, this blur of blue
agapanthus with creamy Russian vine.

Two bereft friends cling to each other,
as the drunks beside this memorial
slur stories to fill their hours.
When thirty balloon-strings
loosen through our fingers, a mother shouts
her son’s name at the clouds, over and over,
as if one repeated word might voice her loss.

Thank you for making that T-Shirt:
I’M POSITIVE…LIFE IS WONDERFUL
in black capitals across your chest,
for shoppers and browsers to read
your body’s message. You taught me
to pluck happiness like a harebell
from the nettles. Teach me now.

Thank you for saying “Why not
leave the party early?” as if
foreseeing the brief violet
of your death.

You fell in the market
among lettuces and gooseberries,
sugar-cane, okra and barrow-boy yells.
Halfway through your organised day,
buying CDs, walking back to your flat,
a shut heart, the pavement’s pillow.

I enter the ward twenty years ago,
find you quietly lying together,
this glade of calm, my breath an intrusion.
Forgive me. I should re-write my arrival,
win you an hour’s blessing in his arms.

After such friends, how to continue?
It’s ancient history, forever circling
two verdigris men who strive
beyond grass like silver birches.

Tonight your names
join a list at the service.
Couples and singles cup their flames
by this floodlit memorial.
Once I’m numb from too much snow
I’ll kneel before the sea’s crashed gardenias.

Robert Hamberger is the author of the poetry collections Warpaint Angel (Blackwater Press, 1997), The Smug Bridegroom (Five Leaves Publications, 2002) and Torso (Redbeck Press, 2007). His poetry has been broadcast on Radio 4, featured on the Guardian Poem of the Week website and has appeared in British, American and Japanese anthologies. His poems have appeared in various magazines, including Gay Times, The Observer, The Spectator, New Statesman, The North, The Rialto and Poetry Review. He was awarded a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship and shortlisted for a Forward prize. Robert’s fourth collection, Blue Wallpaper, is forthcoming from Waterloo Press.

This poem previously appeared in Ambit.

John Humpstone
Untitled

The fireflies who drifted on summer evening’s
Warm and reassuring dark
And seemed to my young eyes a thousand
Tiny boats afloat on sunset’s lapis sea
Called to us still playing hide and seek
To keep night’s magic dancing in the air.

And though the sky grew darker
With each moment’s passing
I teased and hid and kicked and screamed
At being called and sent to bed.
I’d plead for just a minute more
But knew full well the time had come
To rest before tomorrow’s break.

In later years in smoke-filled clubs
We danced until the sky grew pale
And as the morning sun replaced the fractured light
Of spinning mirror balls, we laughed and screamed
And pleaded for that one last song
But knew the folly of our chants, as time had come
To face the day that blazed outside beyond
The neon and the strobes.

And now although my world has moved indoors
And withered limbs defy my dance,
Despite a life that shrinks at nearly every bend
I’ll plead for just a minute more
And hide and plead and kick and scream
But know that I am being called
To rest again in cool but reassuring dark.

John Humpstone grew up on Long Island. After graduating from Pratt Institute, he became an interior designer and was one of the founders of Lexington Gardens, a design and garden store in Manhattan.  A lifelong artist and writer and a lively conversationalist, he wrote this poem when he knew he was dying of AIDS, and left it behind unpublished. John died on June 23rd, 1996, a few days before his 40th birthday.

This poem is not previously published.

Debra McQueen
Diminished Capacity

You don’t get to be a fag hag with clout
in this city until you’ve danced in a crowd
at the Moby Dick and cackled
like Joan Rivers when a queen explains
why your shoe soles are sticky.
“It’s all that dried semen, honey.”

Coming of age is a stroll
down the happy trail dotted with
peace, love, and men
the spittin’ image of Tina Turner or Cher.
It smells of Djarum cloves
and tastes like Caramel Latte
and wonton soup
and pesto pizza
and Double Rainbow
Tutti Frutti ice cream.

Among ten thousand souls
at the vigil, slim candles
burn in Dixie cups.
The cups prevent the breeze from snuffing
them out like the lives of Milk
and Moscone. It’s been ten years
but it’s yesterday tonight.

Even in fury there is humor.
A billboard on the way in:
“San Francisco Home
of Twinkies”
where you can get away with double homicide
if you eat enough Hostess snack cakes
and one of your victims is gay.
And this in
the beckoning city where
manicured lawns and pastel houses
of a vast neighborhood pulse
with show tunes and swaying hips.
And men hold hands with men
and kiss! In the light of day, kissing each other!
A beautiful vacuum, this “Boy
in the Plastic Bubble” world of how it should be.
Everyone’s free and loves freely.

There is dancing
to George Michael and Duran Duran
in clubs where lights strike
mirrored balls and swirl
along the walls and floor
like a square dancer’s skirt.

It’s also Black Flag seared
industrial pierced guitar riffs
and coffee so long on the stove
it hurts to breathe.

At night, drag queens meander
down the yellow brick road.
Tina’s smeared her lipstick
and Cher’s stocking has a run.

Walk through the door of life
with guileless eyes and a heart
as open as a window in springtime.
The cumulus clouds, puffy
Pillsbury Doughboys,
part, revealing the truth –
life’s not lollipops and rainbows.
A shadow follows every living, dying thing.
This is evolution.

Debra McQueen is the author of the poetry collection Bad Girlfriend (Singing Bone Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in The Legendary, Neon UK, rogueAgent, and the anthology Revolution & the Discontent, forthcoming from Poetry in Motion Publishing House, among others. WORK Literary Magazine published one of her many scathing resignation letters and, in spite of this, she still has a job teaching special education in Soda City, South Carolina.

Mercedes Webb-Pullman
The Beetroot Buffet

(for Sister Robert – you’ll always be Top Cat for me)

When Oxford Street got so damned trendy
that even the gays were forced out
Pat bought a small pub in Leichhardt.
His grand opening night was a rout.

Caesars was instantly famous,
a beacon for gays, far and wide
where metro, hetero, bi, bear and trans
could pose, pirouette, meet or hide.

A back room with boom box for disco
became Sunday night party choice
where girls karaoked in dress-up;
you couldn’t match costume to voice.

Then one day the license inspectors
threatened closure; he didn’t serve food.
There were gay patron chefs in abundance
and offers came in, mostly rude.

A head chef was chosen, and buffet
as easiest; opening night
invitations were sent out by gaydar,
decorations and ambiance right.

The food must be eaten with fingers,
we can’t let those twinkies have blades.
Lack of planning and budget meant platters
were decorated with beetroot cascades

so the overall visuals were startling
once you passed the security guard.
(a slinky dark man in a ball gown
white Antoinette wig lacquered hard)

Sister Robert spent hours getting ready;
hair extensions just wouldn’t sit right
but when Carol came out it was worth it.
Full length fur, elbow gloves, diamonds bright

she swept up the stairway in glory
(small stumble, stilettos, size ten)
crying Who needs food! Don’t be boring
let the singing and dancing begin!

So the speakers pumped out Shirley Bassey
then Eartha Kitt making cats purr
and Carol, Top Cat, looked amazing
but the fur coat began shedding fur.

She rushed home to change, came back wearing
a cocktail style coat, shiny blue
while the beetroot bled onto the buffet
and the action was all in the loo.

Many the friendships that started
at Caesars Buffet that strange night
but poor Carol ended the evening alone
on the street with a hot curry pie.

She’d lost all the hairdo extensions,
half the eyelashes, both of her shoes,
her cocktail coat smothered in beetroot—
We all must do that again—soon!

Mercedes Webb-Pullman is the author of the poetry collections After the Danse, Looking for Kerouac, Ono, Bravo Charlie Foxtrot, and Collected poems 2008 – 2014 (all from CreateSpace, 2014), as well as Food 4 Thought (CreateSpace, 2012) and Numeralla Dreaming (Bench Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, poetryrepairs, Connotations, and The Red Room. Mercedes lives on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University Wellington.

This poem is not previously published.

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
Now we are 10

The equation is “10.”
I am single and free.
And he is not more.

His presence was a burden.
A life that I passed in a den,
Our marriage was an incident;
No, an accident that occurred
As a life imprisonment
I was sentenced to.

I lived those years
As if I were dying
Day after day—
Month after month—
Year after year
But now I have won the war finally.
One is to zero,
Yes “10” is my score.

I will rejoice.
I will sing.
As I were born again;
I am free today.

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi  is the author of two books on lesser known Indian languages: A Grammar of Hadoti (LINCOM GmbH, 2012) and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi (LINCOM GmbH, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines worldwide. His poem “Mother” was included as a prologue to the essay collection Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), edited by Dana Cooper and Claire Phelan. Amitabh is an assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University in Katra, Jammu and Kashmir, India.