Five Poems by Frederick Pollack

 

Fabulous

A trumperson has one of those

cups emblazoned with stars and stripes,

an eagle and the phrase “Liberal Tears.”

One night it’s filled as suggested.

More detail would make this a realist poem

with shrieking and carrying-on, even

cops, however understanding;

but that’s not what it’s doing, except

abstractly, towards the end. After

a while our hero goes into

his back yard, which is weedy and stony, lights

a smoke and ceremoniously pours

the contents of the cup onto a rock.

Which talks to him. It says he shouldn’t smoke,

cites studies and statistics, makes 

other suggestions, some quite personal

(the liberal is mentioned). “What the fuck

are you?” asks our hero.

“The future,” says the rock, then hurries

to give more advice and connect it

to larger factors, tariffs, wars, 

immigrant contributions to Social Security,

etc. What drives our hero nuts

is its tone of concern, which means it doesn’t

think he’s smart, can’t take care of

himself, and he kicks 

the fast-drying rock farther into the yard.

Sometime later he remembers

a rash, or a noise in his car, would like

info, finds the rock and (making sure

no one is looking) asks. But the rock

is silent, for that’s how the future is.

Penny Ante


The multiverse theory

limps on

never sure of it

can’t get rid of it

my favorite is one

where we were decided on

behind half-closed doors

in a dim old building

then basically forgotten

they had larger interests

elsewhere

left town

and each of us

is exactly the same 

as here, except safe

A cenar teco

Before disease, it was my

bad habits that got me; but

before that, as Wilde

or was it Shaw said of Frank Harris,

I was invited to all the best houses,

once. I, too, known for wit

(a thing less and less known),

but mine 

was creepy. E.g.: after dully, genuinely 

praising the food, I was asked by hosts

how I felt about the rest of

their thing. (“I know I’m asking for it,” laughed

the one with jewels.) “Well, your paintings –” I said,

“I didn’t know people had

so many ancestors. I’ve none myself.

It’s a new experience. A landscape, a still life,

God knows an abstraction – one can

sort of drift into them, escape;

but those faces (and they do look like you)

are like sentries, they keep me locked in place.”

Of course they said that wasn’t strictly true.

The drip, the liquids

sucked painfully by throat or veins,

the sleep-destroying pills,

the inadequate television

symbolically near the ceiling,

the nurses who sometimes save me

a bit of their own despair, the docs who speak

for a busy world

that never really claimed me … the bird 

I hear at 3 AM, then strive

till dawn to interpret … 

these aren’t important. What counts are the moments

when nothing happens, including dying.

And they can be divided and divided

until, with the right attitude, 

I drift away on them as if

they were art. (The paintings here 

are of skies and beach scenes, which

can only mark the borders of the prison).

Mentor

Some memories are generic,

which doesn’t make them false.

Repeatedly, apparently,

I was in the position

of urging someone to read

a given book. And when that person

did, we talked about it,

which usually meant I talked about it,

which also happened when he or she

didn’t read it. The image comes

from my youth or late childhood

or earlier. There’s that cute

photo of me with Mitch from next door

(we’re two) on a sofa. I’m brandishing

a book. It has cloth pages,

cows, ducks, and the sun,

no words. His descendants

may see this poem as a testament

to egotism masquerading

as brains – a possibly valid insight 

mimicked by many slobs.

Hand in Glove

Since the last time my desk was such

a mess, I’ve grown aware that it’s connected

to one much larger and more elegant –

van de Velde’s mahogany, Olbrich’s rosewood ...

The questions Where it is and Who or

what uses it are both unanswerable 

and, one may say, inane. I only

know that when half-thought, half-written

items (once there were also ashes) 

cover my desk the light dims

there; depression, war, the final 

heat-death lie heavy beyond 

the incomparable window. Conversely, 

when I produce a decent line, work

there progresses through the night,

word spreads through the cafés, Freud 

and Lenin meet and talk at length,

the church bells ring under new auspices.

Frederick Pollack - Washington, DC. Author of two book-length narrative poems: THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections of shorter poems: A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, 2024). Pollack has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Lothlorien Poetry Journal (2022, ’23, ’24, ’25)etc. 

Website: www.frederickpollack.com.