Within the System by Frederick Pollack

I remind myself not to be awed.
I can do something he can’t –
write – and was invited,
and am not the archetype that still,
beneath the prevailing academic blandness,
lurks and inspires: the drunken, mumbling,
wife-stealing poet. I’m an equal

except in assets. His assets
include the soaring ceiling, the hanging
halogen lamps that frame the arriving
guests like a production number
in a Sondheim, eight hundred feet
of books, and the bilious
gold and nervous umber

of a Braque of my favorite period:
recuperating from the head-wound … Plus
the spectacular wife, of whom the less said
the easier ... They show us round,
not boasting (except in their wine-cellar), not
self-deprecating, merely sharing.
Then the staff brings in food.

From the ceviche through the Caesar he speaks
of the possibilities of wind-farms (his
wind-farms), a kind of supersonic
traffic-cop to reroute migrations,
his interest in desalination. Seeks
always to treat the opposition
lawyers and CEOs, he says, as

people. One of the exotic
adopted children, defying bedtime,
enters, is hugged and tearlessly nannied
off. From the rosemary lamb and eggplant
parmigian until dessert the guests
hold forth: about some clinic, a program
for convicts; another, equally worthy kind

of program. I hold back but he draws
me out. I speak in a bland, academic
way (it sounds like someone else)
about my work. Downplay
my anarchomarxism. Make
my colleagues sound like public defenders,
case-workers. The surgeon knows

two names; the producer misquotes
Stevens. Our host seems disappointed,
says something about subjectivity
(or “possession”) I can’t quarrel with.
Over coffee the wife presides,
hair glowing in that light as if anointed;
and what she does is so

good, worthwhile, self-sacrificing
(not to mention the kids) that I can’t remember
what it is. The topic of pasts comes up.
“My mother was an addict,”
that husky, perfect or perfected voice
announces. “Of disaster, more
than anything. We moved

from shelter to shelter to SRO ...
I had a terrible early life.”
No silence supervenes – her tone
is neither doleful nor aggrieved –
till I ask, “Do you ever miss those days?”
and she says, “Yes. In a way. Yes,”
and suddenly equality is achieved.



Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both published by Story Line Press. Other of his poems and essays have appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Fulcrum, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), Representations and elsewhere. Poems have most recently appeared in the print journals Iota (UK), Orbis (UK), Naked Punch (UK), Magma (UK), and The Hat. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Snorkel, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Denver Syntax, Barnwood, elimae, Wheelhouse and elsewhere, and are forthcoming in Mudlark. Pollack is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University, Washington, DC.