When I Fell

Afterwards I was disoriented.
Everyone was very nice.
It took me a while to get up,
but then, it often does.
During that time I thought of monkeys,
a species with long arms, curved wrists,
who swing, apparently without effort,
from branch to branch, unfazed
when one breaks; swing higher,
at will, as easily,
then hang by one hand;
and laugh (as Nietzsche said) uproariously
when a human appears.

***

Death of a Minimalist

A corseted forest one drives through.
A little costly house on a crowded lake.
Money, a life’s bricolage.
The self-effacing boats of liberals.
The place is a stage-set,
secondary to the theme;
care, the road to the hospital, the hospital
poor beneath this Republican sky.
There is no theme. The note hangs,
and by the time one grasps
it had defeated time, time starts again.
It hangs, is absorbed at dusk
like the music of kids around the point
who deny themselves nothing or, perhaps,
with a vision of some sort of health,
everything but the music,
as their parents denied them vaccination.

The ensemble has room
beside the piano for early explorations.
Their performance won’t be till fall,
if the college survives.
The redhead finds in the repeated
arpeggios that follow that held A
a safe place; reaches toward
the brunette. But the boy snakes between them;
after discussion, doesn’t, just
exerts a subtle gravitation
from where he weaves alone. But he’s
not interested in her or me,
only himself, the redhead thinks, and leaps
this out, causing
a cough at the piano. When they resume,
the brunette stamps like a colt
from being desired. Where’s B-flat?
the redhead wonders. But it doesn’t come.

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 four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland). Many other poems in print and online journals (Big Windows ’20, ’21, 1/24). Website: www.frederickpollack.com.