The poems in this collection represent, for the most part, my experience with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome---AIDS---both on a personal level and as response to the illness and death among so many friends, lovers, and others.I have learned unexpectedly that AIDS is not the end of my ife;cocktails of effective drugs, replete with some of the familiar, disagreeable side- effects, keep me quite alive.I am as encouraged to live on as I feel deadened by the memory of this lasting plague. The shadow of AIDS lingers, of course.We must not forget those who have died as well as the lethal character of this syndrome, even as some lives are prolonged.But I hope these poems express a look toward a future less uncertain and not so necessarily defined in the context of the grim reality of disease pr