Frank O’Hara writes a poem

about why he’s not a painter, and in it

he writes a poem called “Oranges”

with no orange.

So I’ll write a self portrait

without myself.

I’ll write instead about what I like:

the opera, “Surfer Girl,”?walking right after it rains and

the damp makes slight adhesion

between foot and flip-flop.

Princeton gives us great jerky

rocking chairs,

and I lean back in mine,

but not too far,

because last year I fell backwards.

– When I was very young,

I fell off the couch.

I touched the blood on my forehead

with a kind of confusion,

disbelief that I was bleeding at all.