(A true account of my father talking to Frank O’Hara in lower Manhattan) 1. Is the cotton dirty? no that’s old glitter it’s supposed to be snow it’s 90 degrees it’s unseasonable but the Ball Square CVS has snow behind glass Up and down Kidder Avenue spears of forsythia wave yellow the pollen coats my [...]
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Winter. 1969
(for my father) At the hospital room window. You, watching the headlights On FDR Drive, the way to the co-ops, The view of Essex, the public bath brimming now with snow, later With sounds of children, rising from the water— My voice soon among them. Before any of this, Blur of helicopter blades overhead, vacant [...]
Gorjus
(Sally Mann, b/w, 1989) At most six, expressionless, back perfectly straight, Her fingers loosely curled, fidgeting with the sheer white tulle That veils her thighs, while the older girl Maybe eight or nine pulls at the white lycra below the littler one’s Neck and applies—is it Eye makeup? rouge? the younger girl Offering her cheek, [...]
Festival Of Spring
Fridays we crossed the George Washington Bridge to sit at her table. Each time, she said, as if sure he would forget, “Sol, what about the boy? Give the boy his wine . . .” Here she is: my mother’s mother, propped on the metal frame she pushes this way, through the grass. On the [...]
Serenade
1. The hospice nurse checks again The water temperature. Swelling in the hands, The legs, the sensitive feet, My father in the lift device Shows no discomfort, Even beams a little, Looking at me. Fluorescent light in the poster frames. Around a breezy field, silver coastline . . . The patient closes his eyes And [...]
My Father’s Dream
Frank Newton and Vic Dickenson Are playing ping pong in the kitchen From the window, Union Sq Listen! it’s Peewee Russell on the gramophone Peewee got a letter all the way from China To The Maker Of Heavenly Music Nick’s, USA And the pennies we always threw, by the net, in the rug Anybody who [...]
Night and Day
With my low rent and my solitude and my Bachelor’s in English, I’m on the West Coast, I’m getting religious and I’m up to my elbows in dishwater and I hear voices: Blessed art thou, God of our Fathers, they say, chanting name after name, from Abraham to the present, stopping predictably, at the name [...]
Lunch
I think even your Grandpa Ben was embarrassed By how Grandma Gert clung to him when he showed up At a bar-mitzvah. We’d heard he’d taken another name, Married someone else, run another business, But it was like he never left . . . Once, I think I was eleven, she took me to meet [...]
Frank Gets Lucky
3.
He saw
his own life—
New York, 1939: The 3 Deuces,
The Onyx —
Or in Chinatown,
where a hardhat tried to play him
for a nickel—calling
Christmas gift
Christmas gift
He looked up as it fell—
the girders
strung with lights
Or on Swing Street,
where a guy in uniform buys him
a whiskey because
“his color doesn’t matter
when he plays”—
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