Beasley was among the chosen
so many years before the plague.
Reagan would not say the word AIDS.
Beasley’s ghost returned to haunt me.
I read Hamlet with two new eyes,
my inner ear spun me dizzy,
the scars of a nation still here,
each name on the Memorial
Maya Lin created for us
to remember always the deep
warning we ignore, Viet Nam,
the war that never truly ends.
Because Beasley and his brethren
were no part of America’s
ave atque vale, they go
unremembered by a people
without pity. Those who live by
the body’s bounty must settle
not in heaven but on earth for
conversations about Shakespeare.
(31 March 2013)
copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander
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