The purpose in retracing a homophobic and AIDSphobic American history for Steven Reigns in A Quilt for David is endearing and enduring. Turning a few pages in, readers learn from Reigns’s words, “I’d sew a quilt for you. //a remembrance of you.” Since the late 1980’s, the AIDS Quilt invites individuals to engage in conversation and feelings of grief about those lost to AIDS. Reigns says in the Preface that he is a certified HIV Test Counselor in California and Florida. Reigns’s expertise explains why he was invested and informed to memorialize the life of Dr. David Acer, whose last years batting HIV from the late 1980’s to his death in 1991 was entangled by accusations.
Reigns’s investigation into the life of Acer and the eight patients who accused him of infecting them with HIV, vocalizing misinformation on how HIV spreads, recalls for me Susan Howe’s fascination with demonstrating the importance of archival theory in writing non-fiction poetry. Most notable example I can think of is The Europe of Trusts, where page after page flows from poem to explication putting archival theory into practice. Archival theory is about describing what is available for the subject matter in question and how to curate what is available.
What was available for Steven Reigns when exploring? He explains in the Preface, and it is clear in the lengthy bibliography, that he conducted personal interviews, pulled courthouse records, scored libraries and archives for clippings and obscure articles. He utilizes these findings, such as a photograph or a record of the accusers’ statements on why they argue Acer is the reason they have a life-threatening illness. After the Preface, A Quilt for David is a series of title-less poems read like a biography in verse. Select poems do speak directly to Acer, where, for example, the narrator known to be Reigns, says to Acer, “You endured it all [the HIV medication] to prolong the life you built.” This direct address to Acer humanizes Reigns’s findings in his investigation into the un-vilified life of Acer, a son, a serviceman, a caring dentist, and business owner.
During Reigns’s pursuit for Acer’s un-vilified life as a person who is a licensed dentist caught in scandal for having a terminal illness by some individuals who stooped low to veil their lack of puritanism, Reigns spent time in the West Palm Beach vicinity. He was in what used to be Acer’s dental office where “history/ was made and rewritten and misinterpreted/ and misdirected.” This manipulated history continued after his death as the accusers sought their twisted justice against Acer’s immediate family and estate. The accusers used puritan values that heavily critiqued the LGBTQ community in the late 20th century to hide their moral failures. They publicly called out Acer’s alleged moral failure in not being straight. Reigns’s pursuit notes that Acer, in the afterlife, “couldn’t refute,/ couldn’t countersue.”
Homophobic American history teaches us that queer individuals refuted any allegations of who they really are to live a normal, heterosexual life. When Acer and many others tested positive for HIV in the 1980s, they were sometimes hopeful that medical research was advancing, it would not take long to find a cure for HIV. Acer wanted this cure to get his life back. Instead, because HIV was equivalent to biblical “leprosy in 1989,” Acer retired “at forty to die.” Acer passed away in fear of the “small-town mentality” based on Christian values. The money he saved, Acer could not use in his normal life that veiled his desires with men, to use for spending time with his love interests or with his immediate family.
One consequence of vilifying the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV in the late 20th century was when Reigns reminds readers through his archival research about Acer of people buying from television their “own pouch of tools for [the dentist] to use.” This example, as well as another example mentioned is a letter to the editor suggesting tattooing HIV+ people, shows the level of fear, exclusion, lack of care, and alienation.
A Quilt for David retraces the public’s homophobia and AIDSphobia fueled by a hysterical media, church messaging, and a silent president Reagan. Reigns appears to practice archival theory like his contemporary, Susan Howe. David’s quilt, the actual object, and the poetry collection, is to educate others on David Acer’s life as an everyday human being outside the news headlines that depicted him as a modern-day leper. Reigns is a poetic force of archival theory in poetry. He brings the reader a broader view of David Acer and American culture at that time. Lastly, this type of biography in verse exists alongside other biographies in verse in the 2020s, such as Anne Marie Wells’s Survived By, that engage in the non-fiction poetics of the archive.
Jesse Tovar (he/him) is the founding editor of Lit Stack digital literary journal on Substack and Threads (litstack.substack.com). Tovar’s poetry and prose can be found in Syzygy, Drifter Zine, Pomona Valley Review, and various anthologies. Tovar lives in Southern California and explores coffee roasters throughout California and beyond.
