4.27.22                                                                                                 

                                                                                      after Tory Dent

Long time. Sorry it’s been a while since I wrote ya. Things have just
really got me underwater lately. Tell you the truth I don’t really
know what I wanna say to you I just wanna talk. You know me. Just
wanna take these feet out to the post office, feel the pressure something
light leave my body so I know the weight was really there. Drop it in.
New Mexico. That’s where I am today. Another boy’s turquoise
on my fingers & I known him much longer than I known you so no
don’t get any funny ideas. I know you love a proper introduction but this
paper’s all you’ll get from me today. Only this one scrap. Dead or Alive.
Pete Burns I mean he’s singing now from my little speakers the ones you liked.
There is something in my House, he’s singing in my House, my House
but you’re not there– . Who am I kidding. All these love songs I mean c’mon
they’re not really about loss not really cause that’s the thing I’m learning
loss it’s like a lover like you it’s always there it’s always with you always.
The next lines at least are more honest I mean I am being
haunted feels closer to the truth. Anyway be good.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

“My Dear, HIV ” is part of a series (also titled, MY DEAR, HIV) of “love letters to HIV” that is both a translation of & riff on the titular cycle of American poet Tory Dent’s (1958–2005) second collection of poetry, HIV, MON AMOUR. Correspondence, questions, conversation–these are the only way I know to process complicated emotions. Writing to the virus living inside my body as if it were a lover–the longest relationship I’ll ever be in–with all the frustrations & anxieties & yes, even joys, that a romance contains, has allowed me to understand more clearly my place among the long & ever-unfolding legacy of HIV/AIDS. Dent’s lines in this cycle were uniformly numbered at fifteen. My own love letters have added one extra line, in the spirit of carrying forward the work that was done before me.

Cea / (Constantine Jones) is a member of the Artist+ Registry at Visual AIDS—the largest database of works by artists with HIV/AIDS—where they also work as the Oral History Project Liaison, as well as a member of the collective, What Would An HIV Doula Do? They are the author of the hybrid print-document IN STILL ROOMS (Operating System, 2020) & a collaborative chapbook with Portuguese visual artist Vicente Sampaio, BALEEN: A POEM IN TWELVE DAYS (Ursus Americanus, 2022). Their work has been performed or exhibited at various venues across New York City & Tennessee. They live at the corner of stories & noise.