The Towel
The
lover sits unnoticed in a corner.
He
has taken the form of a print on the wall,
a
light green jacket hung from the back of a chair.
The
composition of the print,
the
fact that the jacket might slip
are
that delightful painful tension
a
lover feels. So is
the
sound of West Side traffic through
the
closed window (it’s autumn). He wishes
that
noise weren’t here but, behind
the
half-open door of her bathroom, she
ignores
it. Towels herself dry.
(The
towel is two-thirds as long as herself.)
In
the mirror checks for lines – there are none.
A
new hair dryer has a pleasant warmth
and
roar, as if furnaces had cubs.
Her
hair is compliant. Though her thoughts
are
elsewhere, the hair frames
her
face like one. The robe
on
the back of the bathroom door is also green.
In
a moment the lover will be there;
but
for now, though glad, she has only begun
to
prepare. Steps into the room, half-lowers
the
blind, hangs up the jacket,
and
is at this moment
the
way she might exist in an old man’s mind.
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.