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By Frederick Pollack
(Website: www.frederickpollack.com)
Welcome
As far as you can tell, what they ask
first is, How did you manage
to live through all that?
And good taste or
humility makes you discount
your sufferings compared to many others
you instantly think of. But the scene is …
gentle, kindly – a UN effort
or Doctors Without Borders, though with
infinitely greater resources.
You get antsy. Wander
(it takes a long time) to the edge of
the camp. Sit, unwelcome, among
guys who never returned from No Man’s Land
or some patrol. Listen
to one of Putin’s convict conscripts given
a pardon and no training, and the sole
Ukrainian he managed to kill.
They spit at help, drink
and fight, seek explanations,
and after many ages join the greeters.
Terrible Film
All I remember about that film
is that it was Australian and
well-shot. This was decades ago.
(It wasn’t the one about the 18-year-old
Helen Mirren
in a dark red bathing suit.)
Small community: homes, eucalyptus,
no desert.
A little fellow known as a big drinker
confesses he’s an alcoholic
but points out
that his work and status in the community
are stable, unlike his body.
There’s a possible adultery,
tears, a scene in a car
that ends without violence. The hero –
I even forget whether he’s a cop –
puts something right and leaves.
Sydney is mentioned but not the world.
I came out of that movie
onto my usual turbulent street,
reflecting: If Socialism
(this was decades ago) is ever achieved,
what will happen to art?
It might seem dull and small-scale to us
but we won’t be its audience;
their hopes and needs will be different.
Which remains, one of those clear thoughts
of early life one can later
set against guilts and regrets.
A Lot to Like
An ancient cigarette commercial!
Or a football song – the only music worse
than military – being sung
by a ragged, vast, despairing crowd
in darkness. As if
their country and the last game had been lost
and life would shortly be.
But the image isn’t original –
it comes from someplace cheap and old,
like the position of the narrator:
safe with the last light,
as if in one of the expensive seats,
glassed-in, supplied with drinks and heedless
cronies, outside the world.
Disorganized and fumbling
in the murk, the dead remove the dying
from the field, half-
regretting their previous prurient
enthusiasm for their injuries;
almost identifying,
and caring no more for my poem than I for their grief.
Abstract
The world is bright and clear
but contains patches
of fog. These impede commerce,
obstruct communication,
discourage investment. Discussions proceed
as to how to dispel them. Meanwhile
investigations indicate
that some or most conceal
areas which themselves are bright and clear
but are not, however, the world.
Café at Sibley
Spotless except for
three visible crumbs and the wrapper
from a stirrer. Six sample
pastries on a plate behind
thick lucite like the organs
of an angel; plastic
around the server’s hands and hair,
her affect of a weary nurse.
Past the glass wall, glass automatic doors.
Leaving and entering, slowly or slower,
leaning on metal or spouses, people
look conscious of something; quiet. This isn’t,
of course, the emergency room,
where someone might complain about it
and everything that leads to it,
loudly, even here in this
rich part of town. Two doctors pass,
no doubt top-notch, and I think
that what they serve is like
an irrational CEO one tries
to get around but ultimately
obeys. Surprisingly good latte. Among
the lights in the ceiling’s white acoustic
tiles the black surveillance
fixture doesn’t suggest
eyes, or incidents, or memory; it’s more
a punctuation mark.
About The Author:
Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press.
Three collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, forthcoming 2023).
Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, 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, etc.