Two Poems
by Brian Sonia-Wallace
Study Abroad
I venerate, looking at the photos
of the bombed-out church — Bosnia —
which Ben still somehow has saved, a decade later,
on his Google Drive, our adolescent faces
peering bright behind last decade’s boy shag —
venerate, not the past, but the story
of the past, Disaster tourism,
Ben calls it, when someone asks
why we were there
after the war, expats self-exiled
from a one-sided peace, our cold, pale hands
in fingerless gloves sift through
the ruin’s charred meat in American wonder:
If this is Europe — was Europe —
then what were — are — we?
The Ghosts Discover PrEP
We sit at the back of a gay bar, sighing discreetly.
Our mothers lied about how we died.
We came to the coasts because only the ocean
is as audacious and glittering as we are. Stayed
in port after the war. What is family, but a harbor
under storm? We left hospital beds ruined,
sheets burnt, airwaves electric with the anger
that was all our siblings had to give us. Our mothers
and fathers are dead now. They won’t even share
an afterlife. But we make a home, find it in the sweat
between two boys who can’t stop kissing,
catch an Uber to West Hollywood with our shining
new arms, piss in the street to make all the dogs
crazy. Jack off in the alleyways behind CVS at the pleasure
of each pill passing a healthy boy’s cheeks,
shoplift paints to stretch out portrait after portrait
of that blue alive-ness.
Note
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) is medicine taken to prevent getting HIV. PrEP is highly effective for preventing HIV when taken as prescribed. PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99% and from injection drug use by at least 74%. It is most commonly taken daily as a blue pill.
Brian Sonia-Wallace has been called a “creative genius“ by the LA Department of Cultural Affairs and “disappointingly normal“ by the New York Times. His major work includes The Poetry of Strangers (essays), two chapbooks of poems, a dozen texts for choral songs, and writing in American Poets, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. Brian is the fourth Poet Laureate of West Hollywood and an Academy of American Poets Fellow, as well as a Writer-in-Residence for Amtrak, Mall of America, Dollar Shave Club, the LA LGBT Center, the City of Los Angeles, and the National Parks. More at rentpoet.com & @rentpoet.