2 Poems

Not Too Explicit?

The leaves unclench and flatten

to properly embrace the summer.

We aren’t as flexible, and lack

those fully saturated tones

 

that last an entire season.

Let’s flatten each other anyway.

The few surviving songbirds

will tweak the public airways

and flatter our wry acrobatics.

Later, flushed with accomplishment,

we’ll watch a snug movie

set in the picket fence suburbs

real Americans totally love.

Although too late to clone ourselves,

we’ll pretend that the darling buds

opened just to flatter us

with whispers so bright and archaic

even the bedrock understood.

Like and Unlike Frank O’Hara

Painters don’t paint but install

objects that challenge architects

with stark, aggressive transience

that crushes cultural memory

with the weight of its imperative.

Some of these structures rhyme. Some

unfold a marmoreal syntax 

of vinyl, glass, cardboard, and steel.

Previously unknown dimensions

confound by the draining of color

from the vast collective gaze.

Like Frank O’Hara I wanted

to paint but couldn’t even draw.

Unlike Frank O’ Hara I should

have studied welding, carpentry,

industrial-scale technology.

The latest installations 

critique our failure to protect

the environment from the last

Sunday painters. Their crude work

in turn critiques the art world

for abandoning people like me

to devices and desires scarred

by a callow, indifferent sneer.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Venus, Jupiter (2023). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.