Lunch Poems

When I crave a day with a good friend in New York City, but can’t get there, I go out to lunch with Frank O’Hara.

It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look 
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

“A Step Away from Them,” from the seminal collection Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara, starts with this clear-cut scene from a typical New York day. It’s 1956 but it could very well be today that we walk the streets with him. 

With his trademark wit and intellect, O’Hara invites us into his life with a casual grace that can reach any reader. His observations about everything, from the way neon signs look in the sunlight to a master’s work of art, become a lively conversation between poet and reader. I read Frank O’Hara as if I am talking to a friend, highlighted here in these lines from “St. Paul and All That,” 1961. 

I am alive with you
                         full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety
hardness and softness
                         listening while you talk and talking while you read
 

Frank O’Hara graciously straddled the line of the Beat generation and the New York School. Lunch Poems, published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights, cements that idea. So, go out to lunch with our friend Frank, soak up his warmth and wit, and spend the rest of your day a little lighter and a little more aware of the world around you.