Author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986; reissued April 2022 by Red Hen Press) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and four collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and The Liberator (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), Armarolla, December, and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), Misfit, OffCourse and elsewhere.

Is It Hot In Here?

A hundred galaxies away,
the only silicon-based life-form
in this neck of the woods. It/they
are intelligent. Drink
directly from the quantum soup,
see all know all – I mean
at any scale or distance,
each act or motion and its consequence;
although they neither move nor act themselves.
Easy enough to talk to
if you’re in the right frame of mind.
Humor implies detachment and they’re very funny.
Their moralizing is admittedly
gaseous, but they’re great
at simple if-then statements, diagnoses,
practical advice you won’t follow because
some other force, being practical, forbids.
Will even exchange something
like instas. A burning desert
(though still below their melting point)
beneath a really awful sky,
with a few tumbled crystals.
They assume we’re all Japanese tourists,
and pose your image against that backdrop.
Mine comes out somewhat sepia and faded
but perhaps that’s just me.

The Rime of the Ancient Spaceman

There are places you can breathe
an earth hour; then the metals
build up in your blood, and your shots can’t handle
the bugs. There are bars
where the equivalent of booze
is tea. Or acid. You can find a park bench
that wasn’t made for you. And then,
in some places absolutely
everything is religion.

A guy I know was the occasion
for a vast self-immolation.
Moody telepaths found him impossible.
The locals never think you’re
a god, or pretty,
or smell good if you remove the suit.
And some are intolerably snooty
if they perceive you at all.
You may not want them to.

So you admire the canyons, the suns and moons,
the walking plants, mistrustful sea. Rock, layers
of rock are always a breath of home
or vice versa.
And then you go back to the ship.
From space the stars are merely stars.
You’re spared the illusion of sunset,
dawn, and that anyone
beside your sullen species

has time for you or any sort of time.
The corridors are clean; the AI,
sweet and sardonic, knows you very well.
The less interaction, it says,
the less guilt. But also,
of course, less opportunity
to sell someone trinkets,
upgrade our tech, or chance at last upon
the fair maiden of the spaceways.

The Damaged Detective

I drive home from the precinct.
Why is it, if the captain
is on your side the lieutenant isn’t, and if
the lieutenant is a good guy the captain
is a crocodile, while the Chief …
It’s like the institution of marriage,
or parenting or any other
institution, a bottomless cynicism
devouring all good will.

By day the avenue is quiet, because
there’s no more money to be made from it.
Same reason it’s loud at night.
There are gunshots beyond
the 7/11, past my grimy block.
People in various states
of undress and blood loss flee
the bars, look pleading up
from where they have fallen … Not my case.

At home I drink from the only
bottle that wasn’t smashed
on the floor. Someone did a number
on my couch, desk, toilet, closet, bed,
and goldfish. But didn’t touch
the notes and photos on the longest wall,
connected by arrows of tape. Why not?
From being a weapon against the gang,
has my chart become

a symbol of their power?
Is that the same shot of Mr. Big?
If whoever it was had
a more sophisticated, postmodern sense
of humor, he might have replaced it
with my picture. But I’m
right there where I belong, at the bottom.