Poem for July
The Day Lady Died
by Frank O’Hara
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed meI walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandarinessand for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on itand I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
Juliette: What a poem. Thank you.1 year ago
Cheri: One of my all-time favorites. It never loses its magic!1 year ago
It never does, does it? I love how it keeps charging forward until the very last line.1 year ago
Danielle: I love poems that aren’t poems but are stories. And although I love proper punctuation, I love run-on sentences even more.1 year ago
Kate: i knew of frank o’hara because of his association with my favorite artist jasper johns, but up to this moment had never read any of his poems. thank you for sharing this wonderful post!!1 year ago
Tiffany: Had this poem stuck in my head the day Michael Jackson died. Indicative of a great work of art- I could apply it to my own experience about someone completely different.
Thank you for reminding me!1 year ago
Brooke: I spent the weekend in New York for a conference and escaped the hotel only briefly to make a mad dash around the Met because I couldn’t bear the idea of going to New York and not seeing anything outside the conference rooms. Anyway, I just had to share that their exhibit on the American Woman charmed me and made my frantic dash through the museum totally worth it. Even my brief jaunt in a cab from 6th Avenue to the Met and back reminded me that I was actually actually in New York and it was alive and messy. Like poetry.1 year ago
geek+nerd: Wow. That last line stops your heart!1 year ago