What Laughter? What Joy? A Review of Madelyn Garner’s Hum of Our Blood By Robert Carr Some experiences require the passage of twenty years before you can write about them. This is the case with Madelyn Garner’s powerful Hum of Our Blood, published by 3: A Taos Press in 2017. In this collection, the author draws on her identity as a poet and as the mother of an artist, photographer Bradley Joseph Braverman. Brad died from complications of HIV disease in 1996, at the age of 34. I write this review as a gay man, a poet, and a public health professional who has worked in the field of HIV preventio ..read more

By CJ Stobinski Contributing Editor In July 2015, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four gallbladder cancer and was given nine months to live. She battled for her life until May 10, 2017, and lived mainly symptom free until the last month of her life, not even losing her hair during chemo. She saw another great-grand child come into this world, got to finally walk down the aisle at a grandchild’s wedding, and enjoyed another birthday and Christmas season, which she loved so much, that nobody but herself believed she would see. I read this at her funeral on May 16, 2017. “I’ve gone back a ..read more

Here’s what you get when you Google “national poetry month hiv aids 2017” Missing: hiv aids That’s right. HIV and AIDS are literally, virtually, digitally, really and truly missing from the celebrations of poetry going on this National Poetry Month 2017. I’ve been wondering what Indolent Books and our fiscal parent, Indolent Arts Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity, could do for National Poetry Month that was different from what everyone else was doing. SHAME ON ME  for not thinking sooner of our own HIV HERE AND NOW PROJECT. THIS is where we need to focus our efforts for National Poetr ..read more

By Jameson Fitzpatrick Poet and author of Morrisroe: Erasures To have sex with a man of a certain age in 2016 is to fuck into a continuum of gay male experience that transcends your own. It’s not time travel—the century doesn’t unturn itself—but the act of sex does put you in touch, literally, with a history that is both yours and not yours as a young gay man. I say “yours” and “not yours” (meaning “mine” and “not mine”) because being gay can be a communal identity but not strictly a generational one. The concept of a queer family is necessarily metaphorical, wherein the points and modes of co ..read more

By Jacob Hardt HIV Here & Now Poet and visual artist I’m thinking about shit today. About what’s about to happen to me. About who I am. I want to be strong and I am afraid. I guess I’m looking for courage inside my self…outside my self…. And I remember certain things about my life. I remember times I’ve been sick. I remember my body torn up with AIDS, not being able to feed myself, not being able to walk. I remember hospices and shingles and morphine pumps…. Terrible pain. I remember being shot at and beat with guns, bad drug deals and overdoses. Lying in the streets waiting to die…. Wanti ..read more

By Nina Bennett HIV Here & Now Poet and author of Sound Effects The death of Elie Wiesel earlier this month spurred my thoughts on the issue of silence. A Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, Wiesel was determined that the world not forget the Holocaust. I have been involved in the HIV epidemic since July 1981, when a friend called and asked if I had seen the article in that day’s issue of the New York Times, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” As a healthcare provider with training in medical research, a brand-new vi ..read more

By Michael Broder Director of The HIV Here & Now Project Today is a day to think and feel and pray and talk about the murders of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa, and all the others, police and civilian alike, injured in the Dallas shooting, and family, friends, anyone anywhere whose minds and hearts and spirits are soaking in spilled blood right now. It is also a day not to forget the impact of HIV on black lives, an impact which is completely enmeshed not only with anti-black racis ..read more

By Julene Tripp Weaver Guest blogger and HIV Here & Now poet In April I attended a long-term survivor focus group discussion about participating in HIV cure-related research in Seattle sponsored by The Martin Delaney Collaboratories and the National Community Advisory Board. In a packed room at the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, we were led through a series of questions. There were separate groups for women and people of color, but I chose the long-term survivor group because I am a long-term survivor. I was one of two women in the group of mostly older men. I am an elder as well. Coming soon ..read more

What Laughter? What Joy? A Review of Madelyn Garner’s Hum of Our Blood By Robert Carr Some experiences require the passage of twenty years before you can write about them. This is the case with Madelyn Garner’s powerful Hum of Our Blood, published by 3: A Taos Press in 2017. In this collection, the author draws on her identity as a poet and as the mother of an artist, photographer Bradley Joseph Braverman. Brad died from complications of HIV disease in 1996, at the age of 34. I write this review as a gay man, a poet, and a public health professional who has worked in the field of HIV preventio ..read more

By CJ Stobinski Contributing Editor In July 2015, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four gallbladder cancer and was given nine months to live. She battled for her life until May 10, 2017, and lived mainly symptom free until the last month of her life, not even losing her hair during chemo. She saw another great-grand child come into this world, got to finally walk down the aisle at a grandchild’s wedding, and enjoyed another birthday and Christmas season, which she loved so much, that nobody but herself believed she would see. I read this at her funeral on May 16, 2017. “I’ve gone back a ..read more