“Human Immune” (excerpt)

Aaron Shurin

He knelt down next to me—fallen giant, empty stump. Feeling the blood  pulling  around  my  thighs,  “I  think  it’s  screaming,” I said. He stood barefoot, one warm leg, nest at the belt, pink wriggling sack, I wanted to run into the sun now, bristling muscular bulging animal sedated by his eyes. My body shook against him on a hot summer day, gushing to life, blood-filled, blood-dizzy. He rolled over onto his side, watching the men. A ruin. A patient. Overgrown so that the flat air had no answer. We floated in which the memory moving our bellies going dark have all taken flight—a cure may be possible—tell me what words mean—pleasure for a coffin: turn and enter your home.

The ghost which leads to burning incense on the altars of magical friends—these gods come upon gods which erects them—confections of the deific—showers down events, the smooth operations of insignificant romances to penetrate into their historian’s hearts and foist upon the reader authenticity of the marvels . . . At last he dies, this exceptional man who loves them, phantom spawn, fraudulent cures, boundless poverty and the images of objects. Just a while ago I gave you attentions pure and simple. I take the oath worthy of your friendship exterminated in me. The lancing pain stuffing me with bucks and thwacks to distill soul’s fuck: slip away, leave the rest to me, initiated into our mysteries . . . .

With the Sixties the Seventies in Berkeley shot forward for replay to put the spaces where he wants—stars in the universe suggest metaphysical poets—lingered in remission studying the cosmic characteristics of T-cells. Triumphant skull in the grin of his malady, whacked as he was in a feedback loop. It’s necessary to interpret men compared to sleepers in a private world. Two men pass through a forest which passed for the real world. From the cardiac ward through the underground corridor to encounter arrhythmia on the cathode screen. His head, his heart, a wave-form. And he spoke his monologue directed outward from the wisdom of a body: hell is round, the little clay pot locked up. The dream-time of heroes trying to throw up names: California, Parsifal, Chuck . . .

Night fell and a moon showed up between peaks. We were given a welcome for centuries. Aroused by smell in their human behavior a growl in heat, with a mixture of affection and respect. A little whipping, a little touching it lightly. One sometimes hears the ice snap with a seam in the center; large numbers breeding in our district at those breathing holes. Members kill themselves, interested only in sugar. Suddenly the door was flung open, a youth tumbled in; the event  we’d  been  preparing  for  changed  our  life  entirely.  To wake up to stop the alarm clock with one hand I lay on my right side facing my other—my Other Side—pressing the human places in a firm grip that woke us up in horizontal posture turned to face each other, covered with a thick blanket, the murmur of description, connected by an invisible rod as resistance fluttered back and forth.

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Aaron Shurin is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, most recently Elixir: New and Selected Poems (Nightboat, 2025). His work has appeared in over forty national and international anthologies, from The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry to Italy’s Nuova Poesia Americana: San Francisco, and has been supported by grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, The California Arts Council, The San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Gerbode Foundation.

Elixir: New and Selected Poems
Nightboat Books

Brooklyn, New York

From the early days of Gay Liberation to innovations in contemporary verse, Aaron Shurin’s has been a singular voice in American poetry. His work has maintained lyric presence while at the same time utilizing narrative tensions and structural constraints—especially in his chosen form of the prose poem. His queer eye has never wavered—yet his has never been a poetry confined to one audience, one mode. Elixir draws from a dozen books over a period of fifty years, presciently investigating issues of gender, homosexuality, identity, and subjectivity via ecstatic diction, luxurious sound-scape, creative grammar, and radical form.

 

Featuring a foreword by Brian Teare.

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