BLOOD WHISPERS: L.A. Writers on AIDS, ...

BLOOD WHISPERS: L.A. Writers on AIDS, edited by Terry Wolverton (Silverton/The Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center: $8.95). This anthology of poetry and prose, much of it by HIV-infected writers, distills the anguish spawned by the pandemic into stark lines of black and white. In an excerpt from “Vigil/ Manifesto,” performance artist Tim Miller stresses the need for action (“Because silence actually does equal death. Because action actually does equal life. These are not metaphors, or gym wear”), while David Vernon ties his growing affection for an adopted pet to the bittersweet memories of his dead lover in “How Not to Get Attached to a Fish.” Keith Mason, who describes himself as a “straight, black, working-class poet,” uses ancient Egyptian imagery to excoriate the minimal attention that the growing number of AIDS-related deaths within minority communities has received: “i will die alone/ and they want to erase/ my name from the temple walls/ in Luxor/ and not remember me.” If much of “Blood Whispers” reads like a cry of rage and pain, it is also a rallying cry.