Capsid

The book is a long-form essay that incorporates eight prose poems, each one inspired by a different phase in the life cycle of HIV. A person infected with a virus is called a host, and that makes the virus the guest, and sometimes a guest becomes a friend, and sometimes a friend becomes a lover. Osmundson explores the intimacy of the relatioinship between an HIV-positive person and his virus. His scientific perspective makes this young gay man an especially poignant singer of this love song.