Frank's writings have been widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies, including: The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, The Nation, Yankee, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review and Denver Quarterly. His work won the 1997 International Quarterly $500 Crossing Boundaries Award, 1996 Hart Crane Award, 1998 Pushcart Award, 1999 Ledge Poetry Award, the 2004 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Poetry Award and was twice the reciepient of the $5000 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Award.
1
Do not rush to be disappointed with yourself.
Rather, make a world drag you to it
behind 24 mules of irrefutable proof, & you
still digging in your heels all the way
before you say, "I'm disappointed with myself."
2
Trust only inauspicious beginnings,
the modest seed. What comes
dancing toward you tossing flowers,
soon perishes.
3
It is the weed of life
that grips the garden to your need,
that roots you deep into its soil
which is immortal.
one candlepower purer than shadow. Impossible
how they move all that bulk
without twig-snap or crunch of leaves, and the
old cartoon about pigs as ballerinas
is no joke now
as they sweep the orchard for fruit. They step
silently, or stand stock-still, until
you see stars through them
or a further field littered with boulders, or
the boles of trees, pear or cherry or
apple, or you see
nothing at all. The gift they leave you with is
night, writhingly alive in apparitions,
and the thrill of immenent peril
-that had you stood in their way, or stumbled
upon one of their young by mistake,
tusks would have instantly
encompassed all that the world
will ever hold for you, and the godawful weight.
Antony and Cleopatra winter here,
their fleets ride the harbor
preparing for war.
Timber caulked and hewn. Sails stitched, dyed,
and spread to dry, Roman purple,
Egyptian blue. Harvests of fish netted in
when the seas of the Mediterannean were young.
December storms, but not serious.
Cold, but not freezing. On dark days, rain
lashes the marble stairs and balustrades
of Ephesus; and then sunny again, warm, mild
Aegean breezes as if winter had never come.
News from Alexandria: coins are struck,
swords forged and sharpened. In Cleopatra's garden
hibiscus and gladioli bloom, and late jasmine.
Antony is pleased with his Queen,
confident in his fleets, certain of his strategies
to defeat Octavian, "that cunning boy"
—he grants him that, intelligence and cunning,
but not the fierce instinct for war.
Ephesus is clearly the right place to be:
rivalling Rome in size and beauty, it is central
to Anthony's eastern kingdoms.
The words most often heard these days
are "seize" and "love"- a captain complains to
his family in Rome that Antony is distracted:
During a crucial planning session
Cleopatra passes in the street below. Antony hears
the flutes and cheers, and leaves.
The Queen has done this before. She cannot bear
Antony's attention on anyone but her.
Antony is possessed and so is the Queen,
and love is their gift to us, not Rome or Egypt
or the fall of Empire. Ephesus strews
about us as we walk, marble atop marble.
Mint and wild thyme spring from the temple steps,
and what Antony and Cleopatra got
we'll have also-a love for each other
that seizes a day in December, mild, in flower.