Drinks with John Ashbery

by Jeremy Reed

Post–ICA: umbrageous plane trees outside,
a green re–diagnosis of July,
giant starry umbrellas lining the Mall,
his talk so modern it was an arts lab
of subjective colour blocks ends in gin —
a twisted martini axis, no drench,
the fizz riffed like a parachute —
‘gin reinstates reality’
he said, ‘lubes normal back in place,’

forgot the rest, bottle green V,
aqua shirt like a Farrow & Ball scheme
soaring up the combo to meet
introspectively folded blue eyes
colour of thought when thinking into space
that shapes it, cracked a raunchy crisp
‘shape of Baffin Island,’ I tried,
he ‘Casablanca,’ nothing personal,
boys on his mind and one leaned in

for a title page signature —
the J resembling opposite platforms
divided by a slanted pole
and good enuf, his glass never empty

like the poem, ‘no resolution, open end,
you only drink to have another one
without noticing the space in between.’

Propositioning
Legs extended across creased cerise sheets,
one hand incessantly correcting hair
is the focus I remember,
oxidised, uncorrelated by time,
a vase with a single white hydrangea

I’d nicked from a Regents Park bush
Indian summer in the window
as pomegranate aurora.
I thought I’d live a billion years
on drugs and visionary endorphins,

ate nothing but cereals, my thin
wrongly attributed to heroin
by intuitive street dealers.
Most of what happened I forgot
in the happening, made my own

convention of aberrant types,
men peeled my looks like bandages,
it felt like propositioning
to stand still in the street.
You told me looking like you do

it’s obvious. Everything picked up speed.
I opposed emotions with solitary
configurations of my life
written on rain. You stood by me,
of course I understood your pain.