Published in A & U Magazine - January 2009
Test Trials
9/19/89: "Heard on TV tonight: Q is very promising & kills HIV in
test tube but warns Not for Human Trial. Well I'll try it.
It is a logical thing to do, and studies on humans have
been performed.
James Kerr
What if the word deficiency had no need
to coexist with auto and immune. Or, you
had been born five years later and the cocktail
caught up to you. Maybe,
we would be mocking The Emmys, choosing color
swatches for wall paint, laughing about that time a bee
flew into your car - we nearly lost our minds, finally
one of us, was it you? opened the door.
We looked at each other
and laughed a full five minutes.
There are 745,000 results for AIDS CURE
in a Google search - and not one of them is.
Now I'm looking at the blinking cursor, feel
the words curse and cure in those perfectly straight
vertical heartbeats - right here you would give yourself
away, and say, never straight, only forward.
"A flatline is an electrical time sequence measurement
that shows no activity."
They say there are
parallel universes
where the thinking of a Thing makes it so. What if
I think you smoking a Tarryeton, a cup of coffee, notice
that slight tremor in your hand. Now
I'm thinking: you never met that man, didn't
make that date, had a flat tire, changed your mind.
Joy Gaines-Friedler