Bryner, Jeanne : Butterfly

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	AIDS, Body Self-Image, Caregivers, Empathy, Human Worth, Infectious Disease, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Issues, Nursing, Sexuality
Summary	The nurse reflects on the men in the room with "B" for "blood hazard" on their door. They are too weak to make love, but they still take care of one another: "as they press cool cloths to foreheads, / pass tissues for sticky green phlegm." Being only human, when she enters their room and they cough, she confesses that "something inside me stiffens." Yet she sees them as "half a butterfly on gray cement . . . . " She cares and she wants them to know that she cares, these men who "are migrating back to the cocoon, / the place where brown masks / protect the unbeautiful.
Commentary	A very tender, yet graphic, poem about young men dying of AIDS. See also the database entries on Thom Gunn's collection, The Man with Night Sweats; and the poems Atlantis (Mark Doty) and The Distant Moon, and Towards Curing AIDS (Rafael Campo).
Source	Breathless
Publisher	Kent State Univ. Press
Edition	1995
Place Published	Kent, Ohio
Alternate Source	Between the Heartbeats
Alternate Publisher	Univ. of Iowa Press
Alternate Edition	1995
Alternate Editors	Cortney Davis & Judy Schaefer
Place Published	Iowa City, Iowa
Annotated by	Coulehan, Jack
Date of Entry	06/13/96
Last Revised	10/18/99