Poetry: Old Phenomenon by Frederick Pollack

Old Phenomenon

 

Sometimes a letter – but words can be doubted.

An art work, but art is so noisy.

Music – in my case, eight notes of Brahms –

can be stored in the vault of the cortex.

A photo, whole or cropped, in phone or wallet.

But often, perhaps most often, it’s less than these

and nothing. An inadvertent inch

of sculpture. A wad of Kleenex, hardly there

any more, containing

a red, unintended kiss. Something scratched

on the wall by the last inhabitant

of your cell, who was hardly kind or generous

but left you a mystery, i.e., a thought.

A stone. A thimble. If they come for you

you might be able to hide it,

save it in some crevice of your body

and so be saved yourself. Or not.

 

The years go by, you get used to prison.

If it’s merely a metaphoric prison, you should

keep quiet about it, because you might enter

a real one, or meet an ex-con.

And the years go by, and you stare

at the dates, the graffiti, the famous

dying light. One day there’s noise outside

and along the corridors. People break in

to tell you everyone’s free.

You never imagined humans so happy,

concerned and thoughtful. But you don’t leave your cot.

You’re free, they cry. With an effort,

you get across that you’ll only talk

to a learned physicist, expert

in time’s crooked arrow, alternate universes,

a negotiable past;

if he says you can go, you’ll go.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two collections of poetry: A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape With Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack work has also appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. In addition his poems have appeared online in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, and Triggerfish.