Diane Ward, McGinty's Pub, Silver Spring, Maryland, Oct. 2018. Photo by T. Winch
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Never Walk Out of Your Life
consumer, you are biologically
natural and acceptable
and I am imitating a man
imitating a toddler’s attempt to walk
there are tiny white shoes that
fit my fingers – yet they’re useful to me
I am the armchair spectator as my life
collapses under the weight of desire, one deepest level
the flight circumnavigates my bed,
my table, my toilet, my self
your one syllable is sentence to me
your no-more-forgetting, a world
the lap is lost when you stand – a joke
until the body’s consumed by lap when it’s down
there’ll come a time: no amount of
bracelet enhances the arm devoid of content
there’ll come a time: to mention the name will be
proof of no claim to its object
I am bound by doors so seriously, to enter your
apartment is to enter the creation of your life from your body
in anticipation of the burst declaring movement
imperceptively portrayed, we, for one, can wait
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Diane Ward was born in Washington, DC, and currently lives in Oakland, California. She attended the Corcoran School of Art in DC and earned a doctorate in geography at UCLA. Her publications include a collaboration with Tina Darragh and Jane Sprague, #8 in the Belladonna Elders series; No List (no list) from Seeing Eye Books, Los Angeles; Flim-Yoked Scrim, Factory School; and When You Awake, New York: Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. Several of her poems have been set to music by the Los Angeles composer Michael Webster, including “Fade on Family,” which was performed in 2005 as part of The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound series at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. “InHouse,” a constructed poem, appeared in Kindergarde, the first avant garde anthology for children.
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front: Rebecca Levenson, Diane Ward, Bernard Welt, Susan Campbell; back: Tad Wanveer, Terence Winch, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Doug Lang. Self-timed photo. Terence Winch's apartment, 1920 S St. NW, Wash. DC, early 1980s.