by Merridawn Duckler

I Made Myself Sick Reading


Frank O’Hara

Ugh, I just made myself sick reading Frank O’Hara.
Not just one or two but a whole box of them.
Why did I do that?!
I have no self-control.
Beautiful birds swim peacefully
in the icy river, rounds of dark glitter.
While I drag like a blub of butter, French and fragrant,
writing letters in my trembly Cy Twombly.

Winter is just tights to me! Damned stuffed sausage.
Then the river got scored
by Rachmaninoff, fat geese flew across the snow lot
glissando, then a red fire truck vanished.
OK, one more.
Help me, Frankie, stop thinking like a hot body.
Seek dreamboats on the cover, hip-in-boots, channel
deep the semi-legal, not imaginary, flesh.
So, so over-rated. I mean my clothes. Not love.

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Merridawn Duckler is a poet, playwright from Portland, Oregon and the author of Interstate forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. New work in Ninth Letter, Juked, Jet Fuel Review, Weaving the Terrain from Dos Gatos Press. She’s an editor at Narrative and at the international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.