Roger Ian Rosen
Haiku for World AIDS Day
Drug and disease free.
What a strange combination
Of disparate things.
Growing old’s no curse.
Considering history,
It’s a privilege.
You freaked out when he
Told you he was poz? Then why’d
You wear a condom?
We ain’t gonna fuck.
Not because you’re poz ~ because
You said you don’t vote.
Blank journals. Millions.
Each one a long story, short.
Novel novellas.
So on trend right now:
Everyone claiming they’re vers.
We are all liars.
Safety practices:
PrEP and TasP. Wait…PrEP AND TasP?
Now that’s confusing.
We are still living.
Living! And we’re still dying.
It is not over.
Fuck the fear from me.
Stuff me with science. Release
Me from ignorance.
Waves of fire rolled in.
High tide crush of “deserve it”s
Setting us ablaze.
Editor’s Note: Roger wrote these haiku at my request, based on the spirit of his frequent haiku posts on Instagram touching on various aspects of queer life and love. If they are too irreverent, blame me; if you love them, the credit is all Roger’s.
Roger Ian Rosen is a husband, step-father, son, brother, uncle, activist, writer, Broadway performer (Fiddler on the Roof), recovering office manager (where he child wrangled upwards of 60 adults) and hernia survivor. He currently works at Trader Joe’s in Millburn where he can be seen utilizing his BFA from NYU putting kale on a shelf. Also, he serves on the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater NY Steering Committee as the Volunteer Coordinator for NJ. And finally, Roger thinks Vimeo needs to expand its gender options beyond Male, Female, and N/A. #SeeFacebook
Bonus Poems for World AIDS Day
Chad Kenney
Consequence
It happens to everyone—
my mother
my brother also
his lover my lover
almost all my friends
have experienced the same.
A consequence of life lived hard an accident
risk taken lightly
bad luck.
It doesn’t matter in the end.
Seventeen years bound together quietly at first
a chronic infection
voracious virus
hijack healthy cells to seed its own
at my expense.
Having lived so long
while others have gone I’ve had time to dwell
on a child’s fear.
Waking in the dark
unable to sleep
hostile dreams nightmares
tightness, tears and terror No comfort to be had
from those who should.
A child no longer
though still experiencing
dark nights
confronting quiet questions.
What happens when you die?
I don’t remember being born.
Who taught this child to fear, where are they now
when the fearful time is near?
Chad Kenney writes: This was written in 2002. I am quite alive here after more than thirty-three years. I spent 15 years as an AIDS Activist in Denver, Colorado. The best work I ever did was developing the newsletter, RESOLUTE: Dedicated to Surviving HIV. Virtually everyone who produced RESOLUTE is gone. All were members of The PWA Coalition Colorado.
p.c. scearce
So Now It’s A Matter of Talking About It
So now it’s a matter of talking about it, I being
placed in a box living, believing constantly
challenged, fraught with fight for every-
thing that matters. The doctor plainly
said it: “You’re HIV positive.”
“Um, well.”—my response.
Once upon a time, I met a prince in a mirror.
He was in front of me gazing in a sigh.
There you have the answers; its weighted
lifting as I knew my collapse.
Yes, you may know me, I step beside you
with my cane—it is my balance, it is
my catch from free fall, it is my knee-
grappling that gives a second and
I acknowledge its slack before I’m
alright again against the world
charging forward through
tingles pain and however
strong I pathway along
-side; weakness shoves me
forward toward the end of
a block then again I repeat
heave an accomplishment—
go on on on on and further
on ’til I’m numb at my footstep.
And to the end it’s HIV with
disability you might not know
it with diversity both hoists
my ability, my challenge,
my daily dosage and it’s as if
I’m at the top of an escalator
then there is vertigo’s quick,
I step back step back move
forward step uneasy back—
the tango I dance a feat
more impressive I know
to leap move down, and
with every little inch, I feel
like yards ahead travel.
Once upon a time, I met a prince in a mirror;
I was in front of me regarding myself
my chin rises my head twists;
I thought was this me as it
is important to realize I’m
watching me living
striving to feel
love again.
Originally from Danville, Virginia, Phillip Calvert Scearce (p.c. scearce) moved to Washington, DC, with a scholarship to George Mason University’s Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry Program. His work has appeared in the Screen Door Review, Euantes, and Ember, as well as two compilations from Averett College, The 1993 Poets and The 1994 Poets, and appears in Super Stoked Poetry: An Anthology of Queer Poets from the Capturing Fire Slam & Summit (Capturing Fire Press, 2018), edited by Regie Cabico. He has work forthcoming in the anthology Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman, edited by Raymond Luczak for Squares & Rebels, an imprint of Handtype Press. He continues to live in Washington, DC, where he is a disabled retiree with HIV cohabiting with two cats.
Davidson Garrett
Il Fantasma: Living at the McBurney YMCA
Like Mad Lucia di Lammermoor
I wander eerie halls in stark darkness
not in a bloody wedding gown—
but tiptoeing, wrapped in a white towel.
Overwrought Lucia—murdered her husband
because of an unwanted forced nuptial.
My marriage to art—paralyzed with fear
from a virus looming in this metropolis of death.
Despair, disease, all around—
a nightmare house of reclusive souls.
The AIDS plague of New York City
zaps my neighbors—creating emaciated faces
of horror. Crazy Lucy heard internal voices
as I hear woeful men moaning
minor key shrieks behind closed doors.
The phantasmagoric voices in my head
plead—do not give up and die—
keep plodding an unbroken legato line.
For within these operatic walls of doom
a seed of harmonious healing may soon be planted.
Davidson Garrett is the author of What Happened to The Man Who Taught Me Beowulf and Other Poems (Advent Purple Press, 2017). His poetry has been published in The New York Times, The Episcopal New Yorker, The Stillwater Review, Xavier Review, 2 Bridges Review, Sensations Magazine, and Podium. One of Davidson’s most joyful experiences was hearing Dame Joan Sutherland sing the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in 1982 at The Metropolitan Opera. Garrett lived at the McBurney YMCA in Chelsea from 1978 until 2000. More info at davidsongarrett.com.