Great
Wave
When did the disillusionment begin?
And
how extensive, really, is it?
Most
liberals, depending on age-group,
would
say “Bush-Gore” or “Nixon,”
or
“NAFTA,” “HUAC,” but my
concern
is more intimate.
Luckily
there’s a website.
Beside
zoom interviews and the written exam
they
require blood and stool samples
but
mail you the materials. The face
you
eventually talk to is as if
crispr’d
to radiate
professionalism.
I don’t trust him
a
moment, but charts appear:
“I
must say your case is unusual.
Notice
how little increase there was
from
fifty to seventy. And most of it,
this
blue portion, can be accounted for
physiologically.
The same between fifty and thirty –
yes,
there’s a spike, but much less than the norm –
and
again between thirty and ten.”
Is
that compassion in his eyes? Are
they
real? “You can’t go back before then?”
I
ask. He starts to review
the
parameters. “I remember,” I say,
“the
tailfins of that era –
could
identify each car by them. I thought
they
were so beautiful, then speared myself on one.”
Frederick
Pollack
Author of
two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line
Press; the former to be reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Two collections of
shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH
MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry
Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum,
Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared
in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review,
Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Ariel Chart
(2019, 2021), etc.