Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara
(or, the poem that I make my friends listen to me read out loud when they come over)
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it.
From The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, copyright 1971
Andy Warhol, Still-Life (Flowers), ca. 1950s, copyright The Andy Warhol Museum
I cannot describe the hold that this poem has had over me. For years I have tried to impress my dates and friends by reading this poem out loud to them—perhaps to make them think I understand any of the cultural references O’Hara makes. O’Hara himself was a poet who frequently hung out with painters, but was not a painter himself—in fact, he has an entire poem about this. I don’t relate to many of his artistic or cultural references, nor do I relate to him as a poet of/in/about New York City. Nonetheless, my draw to him is strange because I cannot necessarily identify with O’Hara’s experiences or vocabularly, but his style makes me feel like I can be a poet. His tone and choices of words often feel tongue-in-cheek to me, and, at times, yearnful. His free verse and rambling style is one I hope to at least imitate in some way. What attracts me is his queerness and his ability to inject experiences of desire and loneliness and joy and rage into his poetry—with a campy flair.
The late Dr. José Esteban Muñoz, celebrated queer theorist, beautifully articulates the importance of this poem to our conceptions of queerness, time, and space:
This poem tells us of a quotidian act, having a Coke with somebody, that signifies a vast lifeworld of queer relationality, an encrypted sociality, and a utopian potentiality. The quotidian act of sharing a Coke, consuming a common commodity with a beloved with whom one shares secret smiles, trumps fantastic moments in the history of art. Though the poem is clearly about the present that is now squarely in the past and in its queer relationality promises a future.
Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 2009, pg. 6
This poem holds such a special place in my heart. Back when I had more dates in my life, I could always identify this poem with the experience of being kissed and held close. And occasionally, I could share a Coke with a beautiful man after all.