from The American Greeting Card Company Dana Ward The 4th of July 14 Every hour means one hour less of this American day every hour means one hour less of this, America. Every hour means one hour less of this thought of hours, this conceit of days every hour means one hour less of loss conveyed as time. The fear I feel when I say ‘we’ I’ve never known less what to say about this. Every hour means one hour less of me, & who am I, & you, I’ve never known less what to say about that, art, I should say less I think go away more, disappear more pointedly in time as a holiday fades into bodies made mainly of water, America, you’ve given me a nothing made of everything, a self, a Roman candle made of water Atlantis each hour more merely the ocean, a tall drink of time after time. WASHINGTON SQUARE THE AMERICAN GREETING CARD COMPANY Each hour means one more unknowable animal suicide should I come closer each hour I’m spinning my wheels, I put my shoulder there, no, I see now, it’s your shoulder more beautiful & fierce than any nation, a bearing of the ocean, a holy day, as the occasion of it, fades, as we do. As we know. So very little. 15 Ward WINTER/SPRING 2014 THE AMERICAN GREETING CARD COMPANY All Souls' Day Ward 16 In the Prince song “Purple Rain” the first chord is a wing whose sound is dampened in a light of letting go It brushes by the cheek as if to heal awhile while on its way as if to let you know you too belong to that elect whose special company is premised on no more than being kept in mortal fact or having died of lovelessness or love already countless times & breathing, still. His fingers flutter through the wing’s electric down both fast & slow it’s on its way to violet clouds to rend their soft indifference; heaven’s hands, almost stigmatic, needing just the gradual upheaval of evangelistic fervor for the puncture to commence, like a necrotic through the stuff of them, to spread, & make the whole thing shower down. That’s what the song does later on, but now, it’s suave & mournful, stirred awake again to be the point of no return it is content to be the vanguard convocation of the sad, & thrilling, future composition it announces solemn-halo first in strums that hiccup on the swanning neck & world in new regard of all the souls beyond whose consolations are refreshed WASHINGTON SQUARE THE AMERICAN GREETING CARD COMPANY in waiting clouds above the song as he remembers how he meant, & failed, to love as all the souls beyond are now forever loved. 17 Ward WINTER/SPRING 2014 THE AMERICAN GREETING CARD COMPANY Ward 18 Presidents Day I visited Washington Square for the first time in October of 2001. I met up with Aaron there who then, as now, had the look of a trim, handsome lion. His legendary face was in another of its beautiful eras. His hair was long & black with silver filaments. Then they were special in the mix, as now I’d guess they’re common. His hair’s feeling was country & western & rock with a city-like poetry free school attended by classic fluidity & sex in its structural protest, degrees of which grew down the day to look mortal & pretty. He has that complete kind of soul that’s both a challenge & the loss of consolation. It made me think I was a little cheap & needy. His torches laughed & sighed about advancement. He was pretty much cool to be heard & to hear. A few weeks before, one of the planes had made the roof above his bed shake. He lived near the top of a building in Manhattan. The next fall I walked through the park with Natasha. One new war begun. Another on the way. After the park we went to the Bowery Poetry Club for some coffee. We saw Al Gore there. He was like us. Drinking coffee. We did several double takes, whispered & scribbled discreetly, trying to determine if he was who we were nearly sure he was. An employee told us he had stopped in there more than once. Apparently he was into poetry. He was wearing a pair of red socks. The next year, or perhaps the year after, I was there with Karen in the spring. I had Chris Nealon’s book The Joyous Age in my bag, & we read some of that aloud. The ideas that so warm & so harm humankind were sprawled around us: students making out, a building’s altitude of cloud, the sun, & the conceptions of the sun, the moneyed school like love with bordered grounds, the sound of verse read aloud between friends. Conrad’s hair was getting longer then. He’d vowed to let it grow until the wars came to an end. Our books may one day be composed by kissing his bare scalp. WASHINGTON SQUARE