Mark Ward
Discord—
To touch me after all
the news:
yearning to sew his
body in. A Keep
Out couched with
tears; an ffff-
Infectious: an enforced
dance, bodies
alight with too much
information.
I’m afraid to touch you,
after all we’ve been
through
Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Assaracus, Tincture, Cordite, and the anthology Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels, 2019), edited by Raymond Luczak. He is founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. He blogs at A Stint in Your Spotlight.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem grew out of our April 3 prompt about serodiscordant relationships. This poem also has to do with disclosure of one’s HIV status—the parter reveals their new HIV-positive diagnosis to the speaker. Write a poem that involves disclosure of HIV status—any scenario you can imagine: the speaker or another voice in the poem declares that they are HIV-positive, or HIV-negative, or perhaps even on PrEP. How does one person’s disclosure affect themself, or another person in the poem, or both, or multiple people?