Report from The Black Box
For Flaco
A cooler
head of lettuce prevailed, but when the actor
asked his question and paused
for us to watch him pause and think
inside the pause, I almost answered
as if we were in a bar, just the two of us
and a balcony and spotlight. The two of us
and programs and makeup and a sofa
from the director’s living room and the black/
womb/agora/séance of theater inviting us to feel
together alone. I recall I don’t recall
the question but its scope on his face
was immense, as if he were the Milky Way
asking am I pretty, am I here for sure for real
for long and my breath was the quiet yessing
of tall grass against the shoulders of a cat
stalking the night. I actually opened my mouth
before I actually thought you will be stoned
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poem by Bob Hicok
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Mortal Shower
I met my butt in a Pittsburgh
hotel room. My face
still looks like my face
but not my butt, my hair
no longer resembles an ad
for Jell-O pudding, people thought
it was chocolate pudding for years,
so thick
and rich. There was fog
in the bathroom and then not fog,
I faced my face
and then not my face, the mirror
staring at my ass
winked at the mirror
staring at my face
and the future was defined
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poem by Bob Hicok
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Dropping The Euphemism
He has five children, I’m papa
to a hundred pencils.
I bought the chair he sat in
from a book of chairs,
staplers and spikes
that let me play Vlad the Impaler
with invading memos. When I said
I have to lay you off
a parallel universe was born
in his face, one where flesh
is a loose shirt
taken to the river and beaten
against rocks. Just
by opening my mouth I destroyed
his faith he’s a man
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poem by Bob Hicok
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The Smiths, As I Understand Them
There's a box at the hospital in which to deposit
children unlikely to win the Nobel Prize.
They cradled their son past that box,
though he'd been born with a pillow factory
where his heart should have been.
That first night, they took turns
putting ears to his chest, listening to feathers
being sorted, and wondered what kind of birds
lost their lives so the blood of sleep
could dream through his veins.
Doves, she hoped.
Roosters, his father said, surprising himself.
At the school for special children, his best friend,
a girl whose collar bones were the shadows
of bears, kissed him somehow
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poem by Bob Hicok
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Her My Body
about the left nipple
of the woman in the bathroom.
She is drying her hair, the woman
whose left nipple is sore.
We looked this evening
for diagonal cuts
or discoloration
or bite marks from small insects
that may be in our bed.
It is a good bed, a faithful bed.
A bed that won’t be hurt
by the consideration we gave
to the possibility of small
though disproportionately
strong insects in our bed.
The blow-dryer sounds like a jet
taking off. The first time
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poem by Bob Hicok
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What Would Freud Say?
Wasn't on purpose that I drilled
through my finger or the nurse
laughed. She apologized
three times and gave me a shot
of something that was a lusher
apology. The person
who drove me home
said my smile was a smeared
totem that followed
his body that night as it arced
over a cliff in a dream.
He's always flying
in his dreams and lands
on cruise ships or hovers
over Atlanta with an erection.
He put me to bed and the drugs
wore off and I woke
to cannibals at my extremities.
I woke with a sense
of what nails in the palms
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poem by Bob Hicok
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Duke
He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15,
a Diner’s Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet
on a horse tethered to a pole that centered
its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he’d ask
for a blow job he didn’t want. The ward’s new visitors
didn’t know this request was all the injury
had left him to say, and would be shamed or pissed,
a few hitting him as he stood with his mouth
slightly open and large frame leaning in. His wife
divorced him for good and blameless reasons. He would not
be coming home to share his thoughts on film and weather,
or remembering her any longer than it took to leave a room.
He liked ham. Kept newspapers in drawers and under his bed,
each unread page hand-pressed flat. And when it snowed
he leaned into one of the sealed, unbreakable windows,
a cheek to the cool glass as he held his fingers
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poem by Bob Hicok
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Go Greyhound
A few hours after Des Moines
the toilet overflowed.
This wasn't the adventure it sounds.
I sat with a man whose tattoos
weighed more than I did.
He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.
His Electric Ladyland lips
weren't fast enough
and if pitch and melody
are the rudiments of music,
this was just
memory, a body nostalgic
for the touch of adored sound.
Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.
You hope a forgotten smoke consorts
with lint in the pocket of last
resort to be upwind
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Another Awkward Stage Of Convalescence
Drunk, I kissed the moon
where it stretched on the floor.
I'd removed happiness from a green bottle,
both sipped and gulped
just as a river changes its mind,
mostly there was a flood in my mouth
because I wanted to love the toaster
as soon as possible, and the toothbrush
with multi-level brissels
created by dental science, and the walls
holding pictures in front of their faces
to veil the boredom of living
fifty years without once
turning the other way. I wanted
the halo a cheap beaujolais paints
over everything like artists gave the holy
before perspective was invented,
and for a moment thought in the glow
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poem by Bob Hicok
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O My Pa-pa
Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.
They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs
and wives. We thought they didn't read our stuff,
whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,
or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,
or those with middles which, if you think
of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch
of beer and worry, but secretly, with flashlights
in the woods, they've read every word and noticed
that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex
and giraffes inside, but not one dad waving hello
from the top of a hill at dusk. Theirs
is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like
'My Yellow Sheet Lad' and 'Given Your Mother's Taste
for Vodka, I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Mine.'
They're not trying to make the poems better
so much as sharper or louder, more like a fishhook
or electrocution, as a group
they overcome their individual senilities,
their complete distaste for language, how cloying
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poem by Bob Hicok
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