I Am Trying to Love Frank O’Hara More
 
I really am! I am trying not to see his exclamation marks
as cheap melodrama and his endless conjunctions
as some kind of separation anxiety or fear of mortality
for what do full stops signify except dying
and I wish he didn’t use the word metaphysical
as an insult or talk about form as nothing
but a pair of pants that need to be tight enough
so everyone will want to go to bed with you for as an older
woman poet I feel I must navigate punctuation
and line breaks with some finesse and elegance
though I admit this grievance may arise from envy
for even though Frank was gay he was kind of alpha male
so confident and cavalier and even though he died
so tragically young on Fire Island that July morning
I will never reach his heights and I nearly inserted
a parenthesis there or at least comma or hyphen
out of habit but sometimes to be honest it is a thrill
to relinquish control and to take in the smoky air
of New York the jazz of those reckless American
cities and share Frank’s carnal celebration
of love’s life-giving vulgarity and practise his distinct
style so profligate exultant unstoppable

Rosie Jackson lives in Teignmouth, Devon. Collections: Love Leans over the Table (2023), Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about Stanley Spencer (2020), The Light Box (2016). Recent Pamphlets: Light Makes it Easy (2022), Aloneness is a Many-headed Bird (with Dawn Gorman, 2020).