Ancestor Poem

By Andrew Sutherland

sometimes it occurs to me that somewhere between

seroconversion & diagnosis I inherited perhaps dozens

of bloodlines, dozens of lives 

the perfect viral memory tunnelling forward through time         

rude ’84 to present day 

& maybe each one of them was as frightened & alone as I was 

            & as unforgiving of themselves 

            & some of them are still alive 

            & some or more are probably gone 

& I’ll never have a single memory of any of them

not even when I pretend.  

& maybe it occurs to me 

I should be able to look down at veins beneath my skin 

                                          I take a moment 

just to feel the way they’re flowing 

& while I’m there, remember             

something of someone whose blood  

            now lives to multiply in me  

                           & I know how this sounds: 

like every third episode of Star Trek 

like some kind of B-grade comedy  

in which I’m haunted by a group of sassy homosexual ghosts

they give me dating advice & help me get the man 

but I just want something small: 

                                                     a scent from their childhood                           a crush that didn’t break their heart 

            a halfway-decent birthday  

I want to remember 1991  

Elizabeth Freeman writes about a Queerness 

                         persisting over time 

& when I think of HIV-time, both the HIV & time tend toward collapse – like Tim Dean writing of transmission                      as a promise to explode a single notion 

                                            of a future 

time sits next to itself 

             & the archive is dividing 

in packages of 30 pills each one a

waiting body long before 

                   they become body 

& I don’t think I care for tragedy 

except for what here now  

            persists in me 

                     a promise to explode 

to never cry at a lazy poem again 

to choreograph all the things I can’t remember &

all my B-grade Star Trek futures 

                    & it’s just like when my mother warned me she

didn’t think I had the resilience for living with HIV 

          but it’s like, you know what, mum, who even has the time for resilience anymore 

all I need is a calendar with today’s date on it

& we’re good.

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Andrew Sutherland (he/him) is a Queer poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker creating work between Boorloo, Western Australia and Singapore. His work draws upon intercultural and Queer critical theories, and the viral instabilities of identity, pop culture and the autobiographical self. As a performance-maker, he has twice been awarded WA’s Blaz Award for New Writing and makes up one half of independent theatre outfit Squid Vicious (@squidvicioustheatre). His recent performance works include 30 Day Free Trial, Poorly Drawn Shark, Jiangshi, Unveiling: Gay Sex for Endtimes and a line could be crossed and you would slowly cease to be, which was commissioned by Singapore’s Intercultural Theatre Institute in 2019. As a poet, he was awarded Overland’s Fair Australia Poetry Prize 2017 and placed third in FAWWA’s Tom Collins Prize 2021. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction can be found in a raft of national and international literary journals and anthologies, including Cordite, Westerly, From Whispers to Roars, Crab Fat, Scum Mag, Bosie, and Margaret River Press’ We’ll Stand in That Place, having been shortlisted for their 2019 Short Story Prize. He is grateful to reside on Whadjuk Noongar boodja.