Frederick Pollack is author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). Many other poems in print and online journals. Website: www.frederickpollack.com.
In the Walls
They were in prison under Putin,
then via miracle
came here; are eventually
imprisoned again under Trump,
freed by a larger miracle. That’s when I meet them.
Her English is better than his but she seldom speaks;
her response to camp conditions was
to become a listener.
Ravaged smile. He, moon-faced, talks readily,
not only about his continuing, death-defying
activism but a moment in prison when,
at last, he slept. On the verge
of waking he heard, perhaps a fart, perhaps
a curse from a cellmate, a cry
from above, and perceived them not
as sounds from reality but creaks and footfalls
from the corridors behind
this world. Where gods no smarter than we,
less in fact but immortal, stumble
endlessly forward, sometimes blundering
into our realm where they, by accident,
do mostly ill.
Those Russians are the sort of friends
I might have had if my life had been more …
dynamic. I invented them and project
experiences onto them because
they’re less averse than I to “spiritual” topics,
and because they’re more important.
Blockage
As isolation spreads, the existence of
a spirit world becomes harder and harder
to deny. Some of the living
are glad their parents are back (and more
connected, for the most part, than before);
some are horrified. And when it’s
kids who return – well,
of course one’s overjoyed (although
they’re always in a sense “special needs”).
Welcome for spouses, friends, siblings
depends on the specifics of relationships.
There’s a return to family, often very extended.
Conservatives especially value it.
One opinion, hard to articulate, is that
what all this reveals is disappointing.
Whether believed in or not, the afterlife offered
change, perhaps improvement, at least clarity.
Now we learn that everyone
just wants to come (back) here.
These clouds of dead are merely (though only
hard-right podcasters say it) immigrants …
There’s also the problem
of ghosts who return to the wrong place.
One showed up at my place.
Seemed slow, insisted I was someone else,
then began to apologize.
This was early on; I’m afraid I let
the pressure we were all under show.
Now, years later, I
wander, trying to find
him or someone who knew him, say I’m sorry.
