AFTER FRANK O’HARA

an invitation to lunch

HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?

when I have no cash

and some leftover fish

there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there

a Chinese poet stands alone

in a field in the Tang dynasty

torn between heaven and earth

(mainly because some errant

translator kept him there)

and I’ve got two-day-old fish

that must be eaten before

it begins to rot

–Norman Minnick

Norman Minnick is the author of three collections of poetry and editor of several anthologies, most recently, The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight. His poems and essays have been published in The Georgia Review, The Sun, World Literature Today, The Writer’s Chronicle, Oxford American, and New World Writing, among others. He was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Visit www.buzzminnick.com for more information.