BPR 52 | 2025
—for Jackson Pollock
on the bar of the Cedar Tavern: the shot
that got spilled after you’d taken several rounds,
making the oak bar report
your vigor each time with the glass
emptied of its mayhem.
Before the impulse could travel its course
to spark your hand reaching again for the glass,
Creeley’s clumsy ebullience, bounding to the bar,
spilled the bitter dose. As he apologized,
you were thinking there’s no such thing
as accident. A moment ago, you were ready
to put a nickel in the Wurlitzer and dance your way
back to Easthampton. But now, you took him
by the shoulders, gripped him like the bathroom door
you once ripped from its hinges because of the mirror on it.
You wanted to discipline him, instruct him in
the logic of charged particles, make Creeley feel
the stray electron as he may have
when his eyeball caught pixied windshield
as an infant. If you had known
that child’s long months stifling tears
for fear of aggravating the wound,
you would have marveled how he stored his grief
as you marveled now his standing up to your bullyface.
Everyone thought you knew each other,
how you looked just then in one another’s arms.
From Totem (2007), American Poetry Review