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).