By: Frederick Pollack
At last I turned it around
to face the window. Such wealth!
Paired neighbor trees, all trunk –
they were here before the neighborhood –
conversing, why not,
about conditions, their and human doom
as a function of entropy.
Middle-distance duplexes, a childhood
memory: not understanding
work and commutes, I thought
a darkened window meant someone was hiding.
Sky and clouds wishing
there were only one flag –
a bicolor, no irrelevance of blood –
everywhere beneath them.
It wasn’t long before
I returned to the other view:
a corner of the room
above the black television,
faint transient bars of light, the walls one
of the innumerable shades
of beige one chooses.
Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals. Poetics: neither navelgazing mainstream nor academic pseudo-avant-garde.