SYSTEM
by Frederick Pollack
Long solitude secreted
a bitter allusive humor,
précieux, calling attention
to subtexts and diction,
enraging (not merely annoying)
one’s mutually unchosen
companions. Compelled on many fronts
to retreat, one seeks comfort
in old hates
and reminiscence (of obscure prizes,
a book or gun collection?).
Then, very late, often
contradictory confessions
of others, their complaints.
But this is interpreted
and spurned as pity
by those spasmodic anger briefly
rejuvenates. Partial solitude
is regained, a reliable chair
of one’s own, being left
more or less alone; a window
illicitly cracked open
to cut the pissy air;
the universal light through windows
blurring the wires there.
ABOUT FREDERICK
Author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, 2018). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), and elsewhere.