The Day Frank Came Alive

It is 11:05 in Khon Kaen a Tuesday
five days before Halloween, yes

it is 2014 and I get an email from Dan Godston

because he wants to know if I can write a poem
inspired by LUNCH POEMS or TENDER BUTTONS
and I think why not? I'll give it a shot
and I get to work on it

The choice is easy because I never
cared much for TENDER BUTTONS
though Kati Short wrote a wonderful
piece it is Diamond as Big as the Ritz but
in Gertrude's voice I only wish that Stein had
written anything so good

                                            and I get distracted

thinking about NAKED LUNCH

and how O'Hara could have used that title

since the contents are all frozen moments

when everyone sees what is at the end

of every fork as Kerouac said 

and I ruminate on how important lunch

is for the creative imagination in New York

and Orh is in the kitchen fixing lunch will it be

tom yum gang or tom khan kai or even

kai med ma muang again

and now that I'm hungry I think about

the day Frankie died on Fire Island

run over by a dune buggy

(piloted by a jealous William S. Burroughs

in a hepped up frenzy over gastronomical titles

I fantasize)

then I go back where I left off and   

casually the only way to do an O'Hara poem

finish it off

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

the first time I encountered The Day Lady Died

and thinking it was the greatest elegy written

about anyone and how the tragedy comes to us

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

and he tweeted a song in his lunch napkin 

and everyone and I stopped breathing

--Duane Vorhees