The Day Henri Died (alla Frank O'Hara)
It is 12:52 in Cedar Rapids a Wednesday
About four weeks before Hog Wild Days, yes
it is 2014 and I go get a haircut
because I will get off the 5B in Hiawatha
at 4:52 and then go straight to the mall
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a beefy 5-layer burrito and a diet pepsi and buy
an ugly COSMOPOLITAN to see what the sex-tip journalists
in New York City are doing these days
I go on to the 42nd street Parlor City
and Mister Hepker (first name Nate I once heard)
doesn’t even fill up a good ice-cream cone for once in his life
and in the HALF-PRICE BOOKSTORE I get a little art book
for Samantha with paintings by Klimt although I do
think of Pythagoras, trans. Witold Lutosławski or
Quentin Tarantino’s new movie or 12 Years a Slave or Fast and Furious 6 by
Lin, but I don’t, I stick with the art book
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Dave I just stroll into the 1st AVENUE
Smokin’ Joe’s and ask for a bottle of Disaronno and
then I go back where I came from to COLLEGE DRIVE
and the professor in the 3rd floor of Hickok and
casually ask for a good grade in poetry workshop and a free sample
of The Canary Press, and a DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON record with his face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the water fountain in the hallway
while he presented a score along the dance floor
to The Wolf and everyone and I stopped breathing