This paper analyzes the relationship between poetry and painting in the works of American poet Frank O’Hara. Against the backdrop of the theory of ekphrasis, it shows how the apparent privileging of the painterly is undermined, setting up instead a rhythmic alternation between poetry and painting that defies hierarchy. O’Hara’s poems are read in terms of their relations to painters Mike Goldberg, Grace Hartigan, and Jackson Pollock. The much-vaunted sociality of O’Hara suggests an openness or porousness to the identity of the subject that disrupts the heteronormative dyad, implying a multiple subjectivity at play rather than the integrity of an individual subject as the origin of the work of art. Thus there is a kind of rhythmic collusion between works, genres and media rather than a deliberative collaboration between two subjects present to themselves and each other. This collusion points to a shared opticality that precedes both poetic and painterly “vision”.