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Issue 19: | 15 Aug. 2023 |
Poem: | 192 words |
When we arrive, the macaws so grandly featured on the website are finding ever-higher branches. The frantic spasm of their wings transforms their scarlet, gold, and green to brown. The bay, where it appears below, resembles, like the sun, its photo. But the gracious parking lot is full of flashing lights, and orange police-tape adds one note too many to the vivid walls. “It’s the room above yours,” the concierge says helpfully (will she be as distraught when the drains block?). “Viviana,” she adds; each room has a woman’s name. The residents of Viviana, young, monied, struggling through some haze, stand about. Hard to see if they’re handcuffed, clutching themselves, or imitating ease. More birds flee. The tenente takes it upon himself to assure us in English, “This will be over soon.” We comfort him: “You’re doing your job.” “My job ...” he says with odd perplexity. “It is always over soon.” (At least things will be quiet upstairs, I think but don’t quite say.) A gurney emerges—slight form strapped in a body bag; is lifted down the tastefully tiled steps; and everything proceeds as in the North.
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, forthcoming September 2023).
In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, 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, Misfit, OffCourse, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), and elsewhere.
Author’s website: https://www.frederickpollack.com
⚡ “Challenging the poverty of words: Interview with progressive poet Frederick Pollack” by Michael Berkowitz in People’s World (12 January 2022)
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