by Craig Cotter
Poetry
I’m in the ORANGES and SARDINES
exhibit at the Hammer
in one of the 4 comfy chairs
(other 3 empty)
with your WHY I AM NOT A PAINTER,
orange title,
black the rest
as you loved Africa
stenciled on a white wall.
I’m near tears
a chemo day,
no job,
your title in the wrong position and color
and Mike Goldberg’s
SARDINES
not in the exhibit.
I have your poem in my pocket
and had hoped to be with it
beside SARDINES.
Beside the actual SARDINES
you sat in front of and drank
while Goldberg painted.
*
I want to have the guard
call the curator—
Did you try to get SARDINES?
I hope Marjorie Perloff
walks through the double doors
so I can ask her her view on this.
I hope she’s at Bidart’s reading later tonight.
He will sign books after.
Hardly anyone wants a book of poems.
The Hockney here
from the Steve Martin collection
and I’m jealous he’s so rich
while O’Hara died penniless
tossing his coins over Joe LeSueur
in their last taxi ride.
*
I’ll email the curator
maybe he’s not a fuckhead,
SARDINES unavailable,
lost or destroyed.
*
A curator walks 22 businesspeople
into the gallery—
she stops the group to my right
and explains the exhibit.
She discusses O’Hara’s poem
in 12 words then quickly exits
the anteroom.
Four good businesspeople stay to read the poem,
three smile.
The youngest woman
stands very serious in front of the poem and never smiles.
I get less serious as I age.
*
Many of the paintings
indicate anonymous lender.
But Steve Martin
wanted his name under the Hockney
to show he is generous,
cultured, and to make me jealous
about his money
(even though he’s earned it
and has his own genius
so I guess I’m not upset with Martin at all
but with a world
that values movies more than poems.)
Also, they have under the poem:
“FRANK O’HARA”; © 1971
I suppose the year Koch
finished w/ the Collected
after his robbery
w/ the 2 suitcases
before the family destroyed the work.
But the poem was written in 1956
when Frank was 30.
I think the curator
should be strung-up.
The serious young woman sneezes
and her serious young boyfriend does not bless her.
I’ll come back Saturday at opening
and wait for the go-go dancer
to perform on Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ UNTITLED
(GO-GO DANCER PLATFORM), 1991.
How many days since 1991
has it not been danced on
as the artist directed?
*
Maybe SARDINES is not here because it was too much.
The job I want is being the kept man of David Geffen.
*
It’s 4:30
where’s Paul?
Why didn’t they print his poem right?
The group has had
2 outbursts of laughter
during the tour—she
must have set jokes.
She is like Steve Martin,
better than me.
If Bernie gets a break from rehearsal
long enough
he might join us for pizza
or ORANGES AND SARDINES.
And then it will be like the 3 of us
29 years ago in East Lansing
with your apartment on the hill
where there are no hills
and your orange couch
before we knew de Kooning.
de Kooning’s UNTITLED XXII, 1982 is here—
Did Frank ever have to give these tours?
Paul does not walk through the door
it’s a family of four
and I’m betting Bernie’s not showing.
A twink in a suit paces guard
inside a paper-mâché sculpture
I want to crush.
*
Bernie, Arthea, Anne
I’ll get a signed Bidart for.
But aren’t cigarettes and liquor
really a better gift?
I’ve had enough.
I need D’Amores
thin crust pizza.
I need to be skinny again
like when I stripped at 27.
You should be in an empty chair
in front of me, 82, no one
knowing who you are except me.
You’d be spry,
still walking unassisted, still smoking
(but no Gauloises or Picayunes).
It should be just us
and probably is.
–1/15/09, 1/18/09, 1/24/10, 4/8/10, 3/24/11, 3/29/11
Notes:
1. See O’Hara’s poem “Why I Am Not A Painter” for further ORANGES and SARDINES background.
2. O’Hara’s long poem “Oranges: 12 Pastorals” never mentions the color orange or oranges outside of the title.
3. Many of O’Hara’s references to his “love of Africa” were code for his love of Black men.
4. I did contact the curator of the Hammer Oranges and Sardines exhibit. He never attempted to borrow the Goldberg painting Sardines that is at the Smithsonian in D.C.
5. “tossing his coins”—The last time Joe LeSueur saw Frank O’Hara, July 20, 1966, they shared a cab home after a performance of Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex at the Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall. Instead of paying half the fare for the cab, O’Hara simply got out of the cab and showered LeSueur with all the money he had:
“And now, as he alights from the cab, he reaches into his coat pocket and turns back to me. ‘This is all the money I have,’ he says amiably, and showers me with pennies, dimes, nickels, maybe a quarter, then closes the door before I can say a word.”
6. After O’Hara’s death in 1966, his friends were concerned his family (mother, younger brother, and sister) would destroy his poems and papers. Friends were worried his “out” gay life and his open writing about homosexuality were a scandal to the family. Fortunately, Kenneth Koch arrived at O’Hara’s apartment with two empty suitcases and took everything until an arrangement was made with the family to not destroy the work.
Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in hundreds of journals in the U.S., France, Italy, the Czech Republic, the U.K., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, India, and Ireland. Books include The Aroma of Toast, Chopstix Numbers, and After Lunch with Frank O’Hara. www.craigcotter.com