Animals by Frank O’Hara
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn’t need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn’t want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days.
Heroic Sculpture by Frank O’Hara
We join the animals
not when we fuck
or shit
not when tear falls
but when
staring into light
we think
we undulated with
the sway of the train.
our bodies undulated
with the sway of the train.
I felt my stomach
rippling in waves,
not sure if it were hunger
or the thought of being alone
with you:
I’d rather run barefoot
on the platform
than let
you leave.
I wish he were here now, we could go on talking, I’d have company of my own age in this drab burned out trashed dump we call the phenomenal world where he once walked the wondrous earth and knew its pleasures.
an excerpt from Robert Creeley’s Paul.
I have to tell you by Dorothea Grossman
I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.
Having A Coke With You by Frank O’Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
"At the risk of making gross generalizations: The lives of poets seem to distill and illuminate many of the questions all writers face. Because poets never write for money, the art-vs.-life choices they make are brought into sharp relief. Most of the poets I know are keenly aware of mortality and survival, they know we are all living on the edge of an abyss. This awareness brings them joy, and anger, and the ability to see clearly. Poets are the canaries in the coal-mine of our collective consciousness."
Lan Samantha Chang, first Asian-American Director of Iowa University’s prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop
(untitled)
Flung–
into a corner,
Regret fluttered
in chiffon unable
to figure out
what she did wrong.
In the other room
I banged my head
against the counter
until blood oozed
large droplets from my lips,
the cuts
bubbling from impact.
I dragged myself out
of the room and
into another. Put
on the chiffon
and sat in silence.
With blood
still dripping
I thought,
“It’s wonders
what clarity
does for the
body.”
A Magritte Relationship
At Abraco,
Lookman and I sat
on a bench,
chatting about love
and other maladies.
Our coffee melting
in the
humid
spring
gust.
When a man and his woman
walked by, pushing a
stroller – I assume – with
their baby
in tow.
I thought,
wow, what a beautiful
sight:
to be in love,
to love someone,
to be thought of.
The image caved and lingered.
Later on into the night,
the man returns home
without his woman
or the baby.
Instead he slips into
bed, to his sleeping
wife.
And his mistress
and their love child
never emerge
from his double life.
"Welcome back Mr. Knight, love of my life."
"I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn’t how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?"
Lenny, Super Sad True Love Story
Poetry
What a load of
self-indulgent
bullshit?
Sushi
When did it
become a
sorority thing?
