2 Poems
By Frederick Pollack. Published on August 12, 2023.
Airlift
Among the hundred or so
removed from the sunken island,
the camera most loves
a girl, at fourteen still unmarried;
always, with difficulty, clean, her outfit
neat: she has adjusted
that much to life in the big
hangar. But the eyes
and constant urgent pleading whisper
detract, so these are not shown;
only her cooking
invisible grains at an invisible fire,
carefully chopping
invisible peppers into them
and serving this respectfully, stepping over
the others, who, sunk in themselves,
ignore her, eat our
real food. The clip
most often seen makes her
the tragedy, while hopefully
diverting attention from
the thousand who weren’t
gone back for.
Prime Mover
Philosophical idealism
survives in pockets
in a still somewhat pragmatic, positivist
culture: it explains and attracts
the failure. The corner where
he drinks or eats breakfast affords him
neatness elsewhere denied. He looks out
on flat ugly housefronts and
land where only tornadoes
roam freely. No one’s around,
perhaps has never been, to
punish, blame, or forgive. Coffee
in this part of the world tastes
like life. In a moment he must leave
to labor, i.e., to beg. But for
the moment he looks up,
at and past the sky; ascends,
as Plotinus advised, to the One,
which also failed – it must have, to require
him … Let us hypothesize these thoughts
and hope, though the TV is always on,
he doesn’t listen to it blaming
immigrants or Rothschilds, or respond
when a fanatic at his door
tells him that Jesus wants him to be rich.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and three collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, to appear September 1, 2023). Many other poems in print and online journals. Poetics: neither navelgazing mainstream nor academic pseudo-avant-garde.
