It’s a bit like Antiques Roadshow:
they mill around the big shed trying
to tease and tempt me
with meaningful objects.
A questionable vase. Childhood driftwood.
Full sets of baseball or Pokémon cards.
Home porn.
We’ve tried to explain that what gets in a poem
is concrete universals: objects that
imply, contain all others, all
forces, the universe. We even flash big
APPLAUSE signs so they can
show they understand.
They never quite get it.
What I choose, to their vast disappointment, for
this poem is a doll so worn, the story
of its lost owner so sad that
I can’t get into it;
and I’ve agreed with the mother, lawyers present,
that the poem won’t associate it with
my own lost things.
Frederick Pollack is the author of The Adventure, Happiness (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and The Liberator (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). Many other poems in print and online journals. Website: www.frederickpollack.com.
The Mantle 