IN THE SQUALL I THINK WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK IS A JACKSON POLLOCK
After “Mural” (1943)
1
A whiteout
all shiny perfect
& a fatal plague.
Then would come another.
2
I circle the square
with what’s left
of my heart
winter blue cold
falling through me.
People look
like the squall itself
dark slants this way
& that.
People
doing what they can
in their knife bodies
& long coats
a frenzy of bags
loaves of bread
bottles of velvety things
splotch of yellow here
blood-orange there.
One guy stopped-
cold flicks a lighter
cigarette arrowing
from his thin
frown mouth.
Trace of crows
blur into milky white
arch & vanish.
3
I once loved a painting so much
I think I’m trying to tell you
about dancers in a casein grave
alive & perishing at once.
stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu/collections/american-art-1900-1980/jackson-pollock/
Bonnie Jill Emanuel’s poems appear in American Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Laurel Review, Ruminate, SWWIM, Love’s Executive Order and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York, where she was awarded the Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Creative Writing and the Stark Poetry Prize.