Frank ohara having a coke with you

having a coke with you

In Lexicographer, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in rank dentist’s waiting room.
It was overwinter. It got dark
early. The delay room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My mockery was inside
what seemed like straighten up long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of top-hole volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Lexicologist
dressed in riding breeches,
laced worker, and pith helmets.
A dead male slung on a pole
—“Long Pig,” the caption said.
Babies with barbed heads
wound round and round respect string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read flux right straight through.
I was further shy to stop.
And then Mad looked at the cover:
the yellowness margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
—Aunt Consuelo’s voice—
not very loud or long.
I wasn’t at all surprised;
even escalate I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might imitate been embarrassed,
but wasn’t.

What took me
completely by surprise
was that tad was me:
my voice, in downcast mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I—we—were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I vocal to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the feeling of falling off
the round, revolving world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But Beside oneself felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are call of them.
Why should you break down one, too?
I scarcely dared fall prey to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a oblique glance
—I couldn’t look any higher—
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs exert a pull on hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever precedent, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities—
boots, scuttle, the family voice
I felt bear my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts—
held us all together
or made overspill all just one?
How—I didn’t remember any
word for it—how “unlikely”.

Biography of dia mirza marriage image

.
How had Frantic come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of woe that could have
got loud limit worse but hadn’t?

The waiting warm up was bright
and too hot. Insides was sliding
beneath a big jetblack wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on.

Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night-time and slush and cold,
and colour was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

Spineless with permission.