Red Rover Red Rover. Bob Hicok
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my forehead against theirs and telepathically
talk to them as equals, but they all ran away,
deer majestically and stars at a speed
I can’t begin to comprehend. Do you worry
we’ve offended stars and they’re abandoning us?
I do. And you. So on behalf of my anxieties,
I say sorry now on principle to you
and any trees or otters or planets
I have harmed, and look forward to the earth
turning me into sustenance. An aria comes to mind:
A poor woman must feed her dead husband
to their starving children. She’s convinced
she’ll go to Hell whether she does or doesn’t.
The question she ponders in the aria:
Is the dilemma itself Hell
and has she been there her whole life?
It’s an Italian opera so the cruelty
of poverty has a natural poetry to it.
They’re almost the same words—poverty and poetry—
as are dagger and danger, mangle and manage,
lover and lever, inspiration and kazoo.
When her dead husband sings back to her,
he praises her skill as a cook and suggests
the loving ways she might prepare him
to give life, as she gave life so long ago.
I don’t cry as much as I used to
and wonder if standing in the rain
would replenish what I seem unable to give,
visible proof that I long to be absorbed
but recognize that I can’t be.
The life of the rough night
I found her in the morning cutting hair from her head
to burn or banish on the river,
a practice run at mourning. Why wait?
She’d risen from bed
to think about the dead getting closer to her parents
by the day, to not sleep
a little differently on the couch from how she’d turned
like a lathe on her side
of dreaming. She’d taken a crowbar to the dark, her eyes red
from trying to break inside
what has no end or center or beginning, while all night
crickets taunted,
Nothing changes. If you want to be reborn, die;
if you want to love,
hurry up: what’s a year, a decade, a life to water: a person’s
a sheaf of rain
in a thirsty world. Rain rain don’t go away: there is
no other day.
Prepare for takeoff
We were poor.
My Mr. Potato Head was a potato.
My pony was half a red crayon that drew all of a red pony.
I rode my red crayon pony with my eyes closed.
Mr. Potato Head died slowly of mold.
The potato who replaced him was also from Idaho.
They’d traveled far to let my imagination put words in their lack of mouths.
Later, when I had money, I’d carry a hundred dollars in my underwear.
It seemed a fortune, and the idea of a fortune kept me warm.
When you’re poor, you never stop being poor.
When you’re a potato, you never stop smelling like dirt.
Scared of the dark, I’d hold the aroma of earth to my nose
and think of Mr. Potato Head in the night of the ground.
If he survived, so could I.
If people called the gross knobs that grew out of him eyes,
I was free to believe whatever I wanted.
This is how I learned to fly.
Postcard
Looking at a bird.
Looking at the moon.
Looking at a bird looking at the moon.
Sharing a cigarette with the trees
outside my hotel room.
Waiting for Pegasus.
Standing in my socks.
Finding a yellow knife in my coat pocket
that doesn’t belong to me.
Stabbing a beer can.
Dropping the knife in the trash.
Wondering what kind of bird sings
for a man waiting for a horse that flies.
Wishing I’d taken more acid when I was young.
Imagining myself in armor in the pool
reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being
as children a thousand years from irony
competitively splash each other
for the prize of shouting I Am the King.
Never be the king,
I whisper from behind my faceplate.
Everything is happening at the same time.
You are here and I’m in your bedroom
looking at your slippers.
Why yellow? Why open-toe?
There are only surprises,
including how little I understand.
My head is on fire and I think
it’s because I have a woodstove
for a soul when the truth is
fire has to be somewhere,
I have to be somewhere,
everywhere has to be somewhere:
why not here?
Refraction
In Alaska the sun had insomnia:
I chased a rainbow at midnight
south of nowhere in a rental car,
having lost my favorite cap.
As fast as I went, the rainbow went.
As awake as I was, the sky never blinked.
As much trouble as I have
being around people, Alaska agrees:
Alaska gives humans the cold shoulder,
the frozen river, the scary bear.
I love that Alaska wants to be alone, too.