The noise he makes is between a groan
and a roar, an enraged demotic version
of the “Do you really believe
THAT??” once used by G. E. Moore;
his movements around the room combine
storming, prancing, and fleeing what I
in my superior helpless way am trying
to say; he picks up and puts down
my irrelevant infuriating
books, papers, and objects I fear
he’ll break. What keeps him from hurting me
is only a convention of poetry.
His argument, repeated ritual
phrases, is that I can’t understand
his rage, i.e., him; I exist without grace
in an outer darkness or lightness, and
especially have no right
to make him a character. I’m not sure but think
we’re on the same side politically,
for at least he bothers to talk to me.

/

Frederick Pollack is 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, forthcoming 2023). Many other poems in print and online journals (Vilas Avenue, 2015).