“Shadrach” by Noah Stetzer

A poem by alum Noah Stetzer (poetry, ’14) appears at the  HIV Here & Now website, a 365-day countdown in poems to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016.

But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?
—Daniel 3:15

Tied at my mouth, tongue knotted with my tongue,
this stone this knife this bitter herb—older
than Easter with rusty thumbnails digging
into the skin on the sides of my chest—
exhaled stale breath into my lungs, pushing
sand and hot and grit inside inflating
until I hovered halfway between floor
and ceiling my lips blistered with cold sores.

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