Late Ode for Frank O'Hara by Richard Weaver

It all seems so frivolous and of course
it is, or was, and that’s what makes it
so easy for you to laugh. I laugh too, not at
the painter who sneezes onto canvases
or the sculptor with polio and the clap.
I laugh at a wound in November, pink bidets
abandoned on street corners, the kind of refuse
that belongs in Andy’s Museum, though neither you
nor I are qualified to run that department. And besides,
everyone knows Andy’s coffee could kill a harbor rat,
or stunt its growth for sure. Coney Island. God. Let’s not
talk about that or dune buggies. Let’s instead drink
martinis from mayonnaise jars and wonder
where that last poem went, the one about you
I began 47 years ago, shortly after your collected poems
came out, the one with the cover my wife and I called
Boot Dick. The poem disappeared in multiple translations:
system upgrades, program dismantlings Dos to Windows
to Don’t-see-won’t. Along the way backup and zips
became backoffs and no hopes. File corruption.
No way hosepipe. And the vague memories plagued.
Experiences rendered. Emotions gathered and released
like helium. Until the many backups, the drives
extraordinaire, lost their aged ability, the willingness
to continue the past’s intrusion into now, and future
incursions in suddenly randomized space. A space
not as commodious as Coney Island perhaps,
but free of dune buggies and the acrid scent
of critics. Let’s never talk about either again.
Instead, let’s drink martinis strained thru yesterday’s
socks into tasseled brown leather loafers.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for the symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). His 200th prose poem was recently published.