Fred Pollack- Two Poems

The Austerity Principle

A bugle, absurd but traditional, and

we’re up and being counted, then

marched some distance from our ragged tents

to form a ragged line.  He reviews,

and I’ve no idea how

he does it – for one guy a

joke at the expense

of everything, for another

insults, for me the appearance

of reason; but we’re all, for the moment, primed.

Behind him are tree stumps, towns that are

no longer even places,

dead earth.  Yet the line

of horizons and hills makes me think

This was a pretty country, I should have come here

before or instead of

the war.

Story

Two years in a cult leave
him tentative.  People
say he should be proud:
he got out.  He isn’t.
Only a little slow to fun
or anger, his main concern
whether his boss is
“impinging.” 

Married, divorced.  A daughter
marries a cult of one.
Eventually he stops phoning; wonders,
genes?

Searches his old textbooks.

In What Is Literature? Sartre states
that the usual opening of a story
ends it:
it says a story is about to happen.

 Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press.  Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Dead Snakes, etc.  Recent Web publications in Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Camel Saloon, Kalkion, Gap Toothed Madness. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.