Two Poems by Frederick Pollack
Continent
Our background noise lacks the variety of nature and the monotony of motors; you get used to it. Peculiarly but neatly, the landscape contorts itself to show you what it has: yes, there are mountains, some with snow and bears, some inviting romantic or Nietzschean moods. Here are our major odorless cities, flotsamless rivers, the policed and healthy sea. If you ask the million or so people inhabiting this landmass whether they’re satisfied, they’ll reply uncoerced that they’re happy enough … We’ve considered allowing more childbirths. And as you can see there are waste areas between the agricultural, or vice versa. Those regions weren’t always waste. Now they are mostly trodden by masters of our characteristic discipline, listening to the layers of voices, rhetorical or private, that can be scraped from ruined walls, charred areas, traces of streetcorners ... From this material, painstakingly archived, will emerge a definitive picture of the past and emotions. We hope to encounter you there.
Pretend I’m Not Here
They say of such evenings you could cut the atmosphere with a knife, but isn’t what you sense the chance that the flesh of one or the other might bleed? I got as far as the table, a sip of their decent wine, the scent of the burnt dinner. What was it: adultery, money, the critical mass of years? They were beyond pretending, she beyond shouting, he, psychologizing, “I-statements,” the stuff one learns; they had recaptured the vitality of an earlier culture, but couldn’t bring themselves to tell me this was a bad time. I could have said it myself and left. Instead I poured more wine, buttered a roll, and asked if I could sit there while they fought. I’d eat whatever was in the oven, not say or repeat a word, but it would be invaluable for me. “Why?” she asked, voice bare of tremors. “You’re a poet, not a novelist, not always looking for details.” “Well,” I said, “we need some details – ” He interrupted: “It’s probably about how it makes him feel.”
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986; reissued April 2022 by Red Hen Press) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), 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, 2023). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), Armarolla, December, and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), Misfit, OffCourse and elsewhere. Website: www.frederickpollack.com.