Bob Hicok
_____________________________________________________________
REPARATIONS
A group of people look
into the well. I lean over too,
we
stare at each other upside down. There's a man
mannequin
in the water. One of the people says
we
should rescue him with a spear gun and rope, another
that
we should ask a woman mannequin to make the first
feel
lonely and capable of flight. But what if he's gay,
someone
asks. I remind them of the oppressive condition
in
which our hero lives, being, not even wood,
but
a plastic designed to keep clothes from snagging.
As is often the case,
we soon resent his misery,
lean
back in the short grass and talk of angora sweaters
we've
loved, of the expression mannequins perfect,
the
one that says, my smile, I owe my smile to this shade
of
burgundy. When I wake, the man mannequin
stands
above me, dripping, his smooth crotch shining
in
moonlight. It occurs to me we may have ruined
his
privacy, and I want to sing him a song that says
how
sorry I am, but the only sounds that come to mind
are
of two cars smashing on the highway, and I wake
the
man beside me, and we run head first at each other
to
sing this song.
MAKING
A LIST
My suggestion: think
big.
If you'd like vaginas
in your hands, ask.
You don't need to file
an
environmental impact statement.
All I want for
Christmas
is
an oculus in my head, my brain
touched
by sunlight.
Simply bore a hole in
my skull,
which
is called trepanning,
and
I'll resemble the Pantheon in
The Pantheon's where
the gods lived,
the
oculus how they came and went,
though
they mostly came.
Oculus means eye, I'd
like a third eye
in
my head, elbow in my knee, tongue
in
every finger. I never
got
to sit on Santa's lap.
Did you know there are
four hundred
and
seventy thousand Santas, all of them
picking
up their suits about now
from
dry cleaners, who use chemicals
thought
to make us sterile.
They give away
calendars too, I like
to
bury mine day by day
with
an X in the little boxes,
practice
coffins,
and
at the end of the year,
cut
out the pictures
of
rivers and sunsets and take them
to
rivers and sunsets
and
say, this is what you look like,
you
look like July, like November,
and
then I fasten the sunset to the sunset
with
a magnet shaped like a banana,
and
the river licks itself off and leaves.
O
She explained, when
her husband walked away,
that
he was convinced his head was a balloon.
We'd had a lovely chat
about the flat tax
and
how every wall deserves a window, an idea
that
had her tapping her cigarette too soon,
when
there was no ash, against the ashtray
I was thinking of
stealing. I liked them
as
I like the bookends I own that were separated
at
birth -- one a simple metal job and one
a
replica of the Flat Iron carved from marble --
and
we drank hard and fast to make it aerobic.
When it was her turn
to pee, the body's excuse
for
reading graffitti --
Life is like trying to
hang a painting of the sky
to
the sky
My boyfriend curves to
the right but votes straight
Democratic
-- he
said, my wife thinks I'm holding my hands
against
the sides of my head but I'm really
holding
my head between my hands. It's a matter
of
perspective, he went on, leaning forward
to
take his shot glass in his mouth.
When she came back, we
realized not one of us
knew
the Canadian National Anthem,
though
we all loved the start. His idea
was
to form a club called The Perfect Strangers,
meetings
to be held the first whenever of the month,
in
the bar you happen to be in when it occurs to you
you
don't need to be alone. We shared
every
other digit of our phone numbers
and
I watched them skip away,
his
head on a string and she letting go.
CONSIDERATION
OF SONG
I've been trying to
think of things that sound like Ethel Merman
in
a bread box. Ethel Merman in a bread box is of course
choice
#1, my father's Jacobson lawn mower is next,
then
there's a blender full of keys on frappé, a bag
of
one hundred thousand molars dragged behind a car, and now
I wonder why I wonder
this. I guess it's because
I've never been, or
even tried to be, a Minotaur.
This refusal to embody
the lives of others
makes
me feel lonely, which brings to mind
large
sounds coming from large bodies in large halls,
and
this, if you look her up, is the definition
of
Ethel Merman. I've known a few singers who've done well
locally,
they have gigs, fans, they own microphones
and
water their voices, one wears a red scarf
around
his throat like it's a Christmas tree. They say
they
feel abandoned when the night ends, when the crowd
breaks
into particles, into dust, I've imagined this grief
as
skin made of butterflies when the butterflies leave.
There is no business
like show business, nothing like the voice
reaching
out, nothing I can do except listen, and scream,
and
every morning, when I put bread to my ear, I hear fields
coming
closer, wind walking fingertip by fingertip
across
the wheat, singing nothing, nothing but eat.
THE
RELIGIOUS IMPULSE
What do you think of
the bible?
-I own one or two,
don't read them, I enjoy
turning
the pages, the paper thin as slices
of
garlic.
Garlic slices are
thicker than that.
-Slices of cloud.
Though
it would be cool, cooking with the bible.
When someone asked
you, how's the spaghetti, you could say,
needs
more bible.
-I could say that
anyway.
But you don't.
-Nor dolphin
toothpicks or advanced
geothermal
calisthenics. Why do you ask about the bible?
I'm trying to inject
one into my arm.
-So the bookshelves
didn't work out?
Different
kind of hobby. It tickles so far, going in.
-I once snorted the Bhagavad Gita.
So you understand.
It's really pretty here,
you
should come up soon, bring Karen and the kids.
-I don't know anyone
named Karen.
Exactly.
I'm thinking ahead.
-Am I a good father?
Mostly.
Though one night, when little Toby ran around
the
house with a crayon in each hand, marking up the walls,
playing
"siren siren, house on fire," you loaded
your fist
and
cocked your arm.
-I wanted to pop the
little sucker.
But you didn't.
-I didn't.
Because
he doesn't exist.
-Now you're breaking
my heart.
I was calling to tell
you about a bird I saw this morning.
It must have been
about eight feet long, mostly Christmas tree
green,
though it had a red band around its neck and four
yellow
spots on its tail, which was split in two, and it made
a
sound like a battery being slipped into a camera, and flew
seven
and a half times around the house, its eyes
had
goldfish inside, I used the binoculars, I love
those
binoculars, I go everywhere with them, I even make love
while
staring through them at Louise, she scares
the
hell out of me, her nose is a tunnel for a train,
it
was a pretty bird.
-Do you ever regret
not being someone else?
You mean someone
abnormally fragrant, someone who owns
a
tri-corn hat, someone who trains rats to go into buildings
and
look for survivors, someone with an inner-ear dilemma?
-I was thinking of
this woman I see out in a field.
She never moves, the
grass grows around her, gets mowed,
crows
have these conversations with her hair, I think
her
face is a creature of wind. When I walk out
to
talk to her, she isn't there, but as soon as I leave
the
field, and turn, she's back.
And you'd like to be
her?
-I'd like to be the
spot between her vagina and her thigh.
There are two of
those, which one do you want to be?
-You choose.
The one least kissed.