https://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
"Invitation Declined", a poem by Joachim Frank.
From where I swim, the sea
is an iridescent band of light
against a black sky. There, in the distance
rumbles a storm, lights up the firmament.
Thick curtains of rain
link the ocean to the heavens.
Swimming upwards I’d follow an invitation
to join the gods.
There’s new strength in my body now,
there are muscles in hubris who’d wrestle with Zeus
if I would let them. But part of me feels
that we mortals are put here on the onion shell
of the earth for a reason. It’s here
where our struggle is, and so I swim on,
a mere dot against the backdrop
of the approaching storm.
1994.
Joachim Frank is a German-born scientist and writer living in New York City and Great Barrington, MA. He took writing classes with William Kennedy, Steven Millhauser, Eugene Garber, and Jayne Ann Philipps. He has published a number of short stories, poems and prose poems in, among other magazines, Eclectica, Offcourse, Hamilton Stone Review, Conium Review, StepAway Magazine , and Wasafiri. Frank is a recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His first novel, "Aan Zee,” appeared in 2019. He just published his second novel, "Ierapetra or His Sister’s Keeper". Frank’s website franxfiction.com runs a blog about everything and carries links to all his literary work.