Joetta Maue

To celebrate April, National Poetry month

A poem I love.

It is not short but not long. hope you enjoy.

Having a Coke With You


is even more fun than going top San Sebastain, Irun, 

Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in 

Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better

happier St. Sebastian 

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your

love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the

birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before 

people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be 

anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right 

in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back 

and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its 

spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just 

paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did 

them 

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits 

in the world
except possibly for the "Polish Rider" occasionally and anyway 

it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go 

together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes 

care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the "Nude Descending a 

Staircase" or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo 

that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists 

do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree 

when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the 

rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some 

marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm 

telling you about it

Frank O'Hara

for some more Frank go here.