Improv 2, Week 1

I was trying to mimic O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You" in the respect that it can be read as a personal address, or almost a letter, to someone very intimate to the speaker. The level of language remains semi-informal and conversational and there is constant play of repetition. What I have thus far with my draft of "Snow" is a base skeleton of what I want to work with in conversation with this particular poem. I want to beef up the language and images. Also, I want to arrange a stronger and more effective set of repetitions. I don't know if I particularly want to mimic some of O'Hara's grammar choices, but the the physical form of how the poem looks on the page is something I want to play around with. (Also, maybe ground the poem with a historical marker to diversify the intimate nature of the subject matter.) Or perhaps even use with idea and subject to turn it into a formally structured poem. This would be an interesting challenge and a great exercise to try. Overall, I feel this is good base material to continue developing.

Having a Coke with You

by Frank O'Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snow

I never visit your grave.
It is February, you must be covered in snow.
I wonder if the letter I wrote is still in your pocket, above your body.
I could not touch you so I made my father, your son, put it in your jacket.
I wouldn’t touch you.
No difference, we barely did when you were alive.
The contents of the letter are lost in my mind.
I remember writing something about you missing my wedding.
I was only fourteen.
I was not getting married.
I try to think of what I do remember.
Photos, mainly, not of you and I,
but events that have nothing to do with me or us.
You standing, in black and white, young, cigarette in mouth, that jet black hair
Slicked back and a white shirt with the cigarette pack rolled up in the shelve.
A photo of you older, in color, larger, leaving the automotive plant.
You waved to the Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell in the cold.
I do not remember smiling.
Even as a child I always thought you were stern when I did not even know what stern meant.
I remember you in the garden and in the barn
I remember that truck, always taking you away, then once for the last time.
You used to let me play in the camper.
That dusty camper where I pretended to be grown-up.
I try to remember you and me,
but all I remember is just you and just me.
Little spots of the past.
I lived in your house for a year, right up stairs.
The whole tenth year of my life.
What I remember most is you coming up to rummage in the attic,
once to defrost the freezer, and another time to collect the rent from my parents.
No Christmas visits, or if you were there I don’t remember, it’s just the same.