"The Galleons" by Rick Barot

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 11, 2017   The Galleons   Rick Barot

Because I am reading Frank O'Hara while sitting on a bench at the Brooklyn Promenade   I am aware it is 10:30 in New York on a Tuesday morning   the way O'Hara was always aware of what day and hour and season were in front of him   It is 12:20 in New York a Friday he wrote almost sixty years ago on a July moment   that must have been like the one I am having now the summer hour blossoming   at the promenades by the rivers and in the parks and in the quiet aisles of the city   when everyone who should be at work is at work and the trees are meditating   on how muggy it will be today and the fleets of strollers are out in the sunshine   expanse of the morning the strollers that are like galleons   carrying their beautiful gold cargo being pushed by women whose names once graced   the actual galleons Rosario Margarita Magdalena along with other names   Essie Maja from places that history has patronized like O'Hara going into the bank   for money or the bookstore to buy an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what   the poets / in Ghana are doing these days or the liquor store for liquor   or the tobacconist for tobacco and sitting at the Brooklyn Promenade I haven't looked   at the news to see who now has died though my fingers keep touching the phone's face   to find out that when it is 10:30 in the morning in New York it is 11:30 in the night   in Manila and it is 4:30 in the afternoon in Lagos and in Warsaw and it is 9:30   in the morning in Guatemala City where it is also Tuesday and where it is also summer            Copyright © 2017 Rick Barot. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'The Galleons' is part of a long sequence that's about, among many things, the centuries-long colonial structure that sustained Spanish control over Latin and South America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. Doing a lot of reading about the Spanish galleons and their trade routes, I began to obsessively see the aftermaths of that history everywhere—in my own story as an immigrant from the Philippines, in the coffee and other goods I consumed, even in the O'Hara poems I was reading, and in the golden summertime mornings in New York when the nannies and their strollers are out and about." —Rick Barot   Rick Barot's is the author of Chord (Sarabande Books, 2015). He lives in Tacoma, Washington, and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. Poetry by Barot   Chord (Sarabande Books, 2015) "luam, new york" by Aracelis Girmay "Water Grave" by Mai Der Vang "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038