“Cornkind” by Frank O’Hara:
So the rain falls
it drops all over the place
and where it finds a little rock pool
it fills it up with dirt
and the corn grows
a green Bette Davis sits under it
reading a volume of William Morris
oh fertility! beloved of the Western world
you aren’t so popular in China
though they fuck tooand do I really want a son
to carry on my idiocy past the Horned Gates
poor kid a staggering loadyet it can happen casually
and he lifts a little of the load each day
as I become more and more idiotic
and grows to be a strong strong man
and one day carries as I die
my final idiocy and the very gates
into a future of his choicebut what of William Morris
what of you Million Worries
what of Bette Davis in
AN EVENING WITH WILLIAM MORRIS
or THE WORLD OF SAMUEL GREENBERGwhat of Hart Crane
what of phonograph records and ginwhat of “what of”
you are of me, that’s what
and that’s the meaning of fertility
hard and moist and moaning– 1960
(From Lunch Poems, Expanded 50th Anniversary Edition © 1964, 2014 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of City Lights Books, San Francisco. Photo by Peter Organisciak)
The Dish 