Robert Carr
Life Study Models

Barely men, thirty years ago, Robert dimples
at my self-conscious flex, muscled body
a frieze. We undress on a dais, drop white cotton
robes. The teacher, in her purple vest,
shows us a photograph—Wrestlers of Uffizi.
On the floor, knees spread, I’m on bottom.
He wraps my thigh, twists an arm. Students sketch
beside our stage. The room, a blush,
soft parts growing against my back, hardwood
trunk and huff of armpit. Without words,
locked eyes make evening plans. Taut tendon,
private hair of moss. Pencils sketch, cameras
click as we breath into the stance, finer than line.

Sheers billow over an unscreened window,
invitation to all things winged. Evening spins
through spring oak leaves. On my back I arch
and shudder, stretch open. Hands hold knobby knees.
I long for lost tickle, Robert’s kinked black beard,
thick cords of dread caught in every crease.
Wrapped in a fist I grow still—age-spotted,
a lichened twist growing out of night.

Massachusetts-based poet Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth (Indolent Books, 2016) and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length collection forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in the Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Massachusetts Review and Rattle. Robert is Developmental Editor with Indolent Books and an editor for the anthology Bodies and Scars, forthcoming from the Ghana Writes Literary Group. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org.

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Julene Tripp Weaver
I Could Never Forget You

I could never forget you, you know that, right?
It seems like forever you’ve been gone. Restless
years without you. Remember how we used to
walk the length of Manhattan, and that one time
you were wearing new shoes? We were at 97th
Street when the fog rolled in and the rains started,
by the time we reached the Village you swore your
feet were one big blister and the undertaker could
take you away now. We laughed as only two facing
dying could. I watched you fake-collapse with flare,
right into that monster puddle, leaves blocking the
drain till the whole corner turned into a lake. We
were steps away from home, finally we collapsed
and slept hours, our last walk before the damn PCP
pneumonia you caught that night stole you away.

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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Jarred Thompson
Everything Touched

They will come with their needles and prod
me like a horse on a ranch.

They will make me strip,
hold my nutsack and feel
along every tube for signs of my grotesqueness.

Shining warm lights onto skin,
searching inside and out for what’s truly within.
This is the point where your body doesn’t belong to you.
Where science overrides all emotion.
Take pill, take pill, bend over like before
(you are well versed in submitting)
take it and keep quiet.

Hypodermic needles uncover the running poisoned river
which has drowned millions before me,
the numbness of too much possibility,
too much anxiety, too little solid ground.

Then take your condoms and be gone
Return to a world scattered and confused
Where every hue is changed into some gothic version
Of itself.
Even smiles, even tears, even laughs, everything touched.
Nothing saved from this that will find you out.

Jarred Thompson‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, Type House Literary Magazine, Outcast Magazine, the Esthetic Apostle, Sky Island Journal, Cosmographia Books, Best New African Poets Anthology of 2016, and New Contrast Literary Journal. His chapbook Universes and Paradoxes was shortlisted for the Kingdom in the Wild Poetry Prize. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, New Contrast Literary Journal (forthcoming 2018), The Rainy Day Literary Magazine, ImageOutWrite, the Johannesburg Review of Books and Transcending the Flame: The Writivism Mentoring Anthology (Black Letter Media, 2018).

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Robert Carr
Alchemical Waters

Sated	 	is the place 
just out of reach 
in a blackened room.
  
Cock dowsing the center 
that sustains space.  

Deep		pant creased mage, 
port-a-potty fucker, 
surgeon of hunger, 
flushing bright 
	blue chemical waters.  

Dare	 	defy a simple protein—
come uninfected  
through insistence on paternity, 
	to a field 
where women glean seed.  

My transformation 	from never 
enough to claim it all.
  
The note, 
teaching by the bed—To hold 
a dying hand, 		hotter 
than squeezed crotch. 

Changing men, 
the defiant transition from glory 
	hole to Daddy—

I stand 
wrapped in damp glitter.	A veil.
If you touch my solid flesh   
you will never die.  

Share		a son in the Capitol, 
new love in the valley, 
	a husband like no other.

Massachusetts-based poet Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth (Indolent Books, 2016) and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length collection forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in the Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Massachusetts Review and Rattle. Robert is Developmental Editor with Indolent Books and an editor for the anthology Bodies and Scars, forthcoming from the Ghana Writes Literary Group. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org.

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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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Jarred Thompson
Poaching

After the storm, you came in with your bloody hands
carcasses hanging from your fingers.
You killed so lovingly, it impressed me.

When I spied the cardiac muscle between your teeth
or the eye jelly in your pocket, the fingernails, the necklace of ears round your neck
I never thought they were warnings but gifts you laid at my feet.

We killed so gleefully together, splashing guts all over the place.
Now the blood won’t wash off the walls,
off hands, off faces.
Now the stench is unpalatable
I gag every time I try to breathe.

Desensitized to the heads you hang on every wall,
the trinkets you leave in my jacket pockets.
I begin to wonder when your knack for poaching men
will turn toward and devour me.

Jarred Thompson‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, Type House Literary Magazine, Outcast Magazine, the Esthetic Apostle, Sky Island Journal, Cosmographia Books, Best New African Poets Anthology of 2016, and New Contrast Literary Journal. His chapbook Universes and Paradoxes was shortlisted for the Kingdom in the Wild Poetry Prize. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, New Contrast Literary Journal (forthcoming 2018), The Rainy Day Literary Magazine, ImageOutWrite, the Johannesburg Review of Books and Transcending the Flame: The Writivism Mentoring Anthology (Black Letter Media, 2018).

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Korbin Jones
men to my father.

father, let me tell you about them all:

the first time was at his place.
my first everything with a man—
kiss. touch. delayed rape.

on a sunday.

his bear trap hands
on my surrendered legs.

when i stumbled home
and turned the couch
into a deathbed
you changed the channel.

the second man put aching
in my jaw. never before
had i felt like a serpent.

mouth unhinged. welcoming.
body cold from all the dark.
yet my tongue stayed still,
could not lick out a simple no.

bent by piety.
bent by being desired.
but now i say it all to you.

the third was prolonged,
a bender that turned me
inside out. fucked me drunk

until he saw the tears.
said they were ugly.

stepped through my open doors.
half my fault, i reasoned.

i crept out in darkness,
went to buy a test. two.
would’ve bought more
if i’d had the money.

negative. negative.
yet no peace came.
there were never enough.

i wrapped them up
in trash bags, prayed
you wouldn’t go digging.

the fourth man you guessed at,
forbade but it was too late.

the night before:
our movements were hushed
by the burnt gunpowder
of your feet downstairs.

half past two.

when i saw him next,
it was love and spite
that laid me down
beside him, a state away,
the third weekend in a row.

the central air hummed,
cooled our skin
and covered the singing
of his body gliding
over mine, our breathing.
i hope it crossed
your mind, made you lose
a bit of sleep.

we did not stop,
did not rest.

welcomed the sun
through the shades
with our bodies—
briars in a twisted heap.

Korbin Jones received his B.A. in Spanish and in Writing from Northwest Missouri State University. He is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at the University of Kansas. His translation of Pablo Luque Pinilla’s poetry collection SFO is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. His work has appeared in various journals, such as Noctua Review, Levee Magazine, and Polaris. His manuscript, songs for the long night, is currently seeking a home.

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Robert Carr
Bathhouse Without Ceilings

Red-lit hall, open doors,
tiny rooms without ceilings,
pipes flat-pulse black.
Belly down, men arch
toward webs of LED stars.
Silent language written on cheap
sheets in tooth mark.

Bare feet shuffle toward terry
towels, eyes on backs adjust.
An under-lit face at the end
of the hall sits staring—
Squeak of cot, the shrimp of toes.
Cell phone glow, lips moving.
I remember a double-skin

tent, silver teeth, a zip
of long ago, the slip of sleeping
-bag down. A good-looking kid
in a tent at camp, flashlight
held under his chin.
Jawline shadow, the lure
of forelock, the way he kissed.

Massachusetts-based poet Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth (Indolent Books, 2016) and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length collection forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in the Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Massachusetts Review and Rattle. Robert is Developmental Editor with Indolent Books and an editor for the anthology Bodies and Scars, forthcoming from the Ghana Writes Literary Group. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org.

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Julene Tripp Weaver
A Decision Was Called For

HIV		prognosis death
he faced me head on		we cried 
in the consult room	joined	in the tragic news
storms 	in each teardrop

I said,		You can leave
gale winds blew through our home
a mudslide 	beneath our feet
the forgiven affair 	revived 

there is a sacrifice 	required
monogamy  	must be mutual		
a seismic shift		deep kisses shunned
but, with a grateful heart	he stayed

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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John Whittier Treat
Got a Match?

In Homage to Sylvester (1947-1988)

“Workin’ on my feet in the disco heat”

You never rested a day, you sang for us when beat tired.

“Dancin’ through the night ’til mornin’ light shines on me, again”

I passed you once on Folsom as the Chronicle was being dumped in bales.

“Music makes me dance, dance, dance, dance”

Even when it didn’t you, it did us.

Again

“Dancin’s total freedom”

For a moment we could suppose it was.

“Be yourself and choose your feelin’”

You told us you didn’t need no test, you knew what you had done.

“Come on get up, wanna see some swingin’, swayin’, movin’, groovin’, slidin’, glidin’”

You did all that until you didn’t anymore.

“Rockin’, reelin’, come on get up ev’rybody dance”

Your people still answer the call.

Again

John Whittier Treat is the author of the novel The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House (Big Table Publishing Company, 2015), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the journal Jonathan and the anthology QDA: Queer Disability Anthology (Squares and Rebels, 2015), edited by Raymond Luczak. He has been Professor Emeritus at Yale since 2014. Originally from New Haven, he now lives in Seattle. For more information visit johntreat.com.

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