Bob Hicok

July 3, 2018

“Redundancy Is Only a Problem When It Gets Repetitious:” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

REDUNDANCY IS ONLY A PROBLEM WHEN IT GETS REPETITIOUS:

a poem of patriotism

A kid was killed the other night in America
running from cops in America without a gun,
knife, egg timer or thermonuclear warhead in his hands
in America, his fault in America for not being made
of stone in America, shame on him. Statistically

I don’t have to tell you in America what color
his jeans were, you’ll assume blue in America
and be right in America ninety six percent of the time. King too,

had he been stone in America as he is now in DC,
wouldn’t have been shot in America, same for Lincoln
a short walk away in America, amid cherry blossoms
in America if I go when there are too many people
for my taste, I prefer Christmas
and having these men to myself in America
waiting for their statues to blink. Half a century

after King was popped in America, it’s still hazardous
in America for a lot of kids to bother being flesh
in America, they need to go straight to stone or steel
in America, the stuff we turn our dead heroes into
in America, need to be cold before their time
in America to survive being Americans in America,
and how many more times in America will I
and every other poet in America who’d rather
be writing about trees or the sadness
inherent to American expressionism in America
or love love love in America and maybe Amsterdam too
have to write as an American this god damn
bang bang another kid is dead for no reason
in America other than melanin in America poem?

—from Poets Respond

__________

Bob Hicok: “I love Pittsburgh, have felt connected to it since I helped one of my sisters move there when she went to Pitt decades ago. For a couple years, my wife and I have swung around to Pittsburgh on our way back to Virginia from Michigan, mostly because there’s a pop and vitality to the city that’s rare and fun to be around, to walk within. Pittsburgh feels young to me, juiced about existence in the way kids often are, so the killing of Antwon Rose seems doubly cruel, not just a murder, an attack on an individual’s right to exist, but also an attack on a way of being in the world. When I think about what I want America to be, these murders by police are the least American thing we do. When I think about what America is and has been, these killings are America at its most honest: we do not value all lives equally, and prove this over and over, as if no one is watching and no collective loss accrues. To have a democracy, all people have to believe their bodies are equally valued and shepherded within the public space. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Step one is life.” (web)

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June 22, 2018

“Going Big” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

GOING BIG

For Hanukkah,
for my wife, I tried putting candles
on the antlers of deer.

It’s not that I believe in God:
I believe in light, and deer,
and a man pulling his weight
in the adaptation of the species.

I believe antlers
the most natural menorah,
in a twelve point buck
glowing in falling snow, in hunters
dropping their rifles to their sides,
in the cool air
cupping our faces in its hands.

To say it didn’t work is to miss
that I got to know how to wait
for deer, which is different
than waiting for bear, or love,
or a phrase of sufficient tenderness
to capture the evanescence of life
to arrive, and last beyond the feeling
nothing lasts.

Light lasts.

Light runs and runs
without tiring or giving up, the universe
is bigger now, and now, and now,
just as intimacy grows
when my wife lights candles
with a scarf over her head,
holds her hands up to the light
while repeating a prayer
repeated millions of times,
adding to the distance
the words have traveled
and the complicated life
they’ve lived, and better still,
reminding me there’s a bloom
in her face only I can see
in this light, so yes,
I know what luck is.

—from Rattle #59, Spring 2018

__________

Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.” (web)

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June 20, 2018

“I Am Wanting” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

I AM WANTING

After I missed a week of class exploring the o
in opium, my World Cultures prof
gave me the chance to make up ground
by writing a paper on why European explorers
didn’t knock first on Asia or Africa
and ask, Is anyone home,
before claiming scads of real estate
as their own. I knew two things:
it’s boring to read history
if you’re American, given how deeply
we believe the saying,
Those who don’t remember the past are doomed
to be us, and I could spend years
prowling the Hubris section of the library
only to end up here: Because no one stopped them.
Instead, I flew to Spain
and as soon as I got off the plane, exclaimed,
I claim thee for Zug Island, Detroit.
While there, I figured I might as well take in
the running of people away
from the running of bulls
and try to find where the ravenous shadows
of Goya were born. My prof was impressed
by my ambition, if not my footnotes
being seven times longer
than the paper itself. But why
opium, you ask? To answer that question,
I’d have to tell you a story of crying,
which was a story of love, which was a story
of trying to hold a woman as an answer
to the question, Why is heaven so far away
when I am so short, and not as a cloud of atoms
trying to discover their own shape.
Just like England, I got busted
for possession and kicked out of bed.
To this day, I have to fight the impulse
to say of my wife or America
or the sky, That’s mine,
as if possession is nine-tenths
of the law, that desire is one hundred
percent of the battle.

—from Rattle #59, Spring 2018

__________

Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.” (web)

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May 10, 2014

“How the Mirror Looks This Morning” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

HOW THE MIRROR LOOKS THIS MORNING

Probably the size of the six volt
made it seem life-giving. I had wires, a drawer
of red and green and black wires
in a thicket where socks belonged,
I had this idea that a six volt battery
would bring the cat back to life
and cut it down from where it hung

but nothing, even when I put wires
in anus and mouth, even when I touched
the Xs of its eyes
with copper. I can ask now
why I believed that,
or why I killed the cat
in the first place, or why can’t I travel
at the speed of sound? The kitty
that comes around every evening for food
purrs closer and closer
to my rehabilitation. God, on the other hand,

sent a train into a bus last night,
if you believe in God, in trains, in time
as something that can be broken down
into units, and spoken of, and held
as much as anything can be held,
can anything be held
that doesn’t cut through what asks
to hold it? Twenty-two dead,
and yet I think of myself
as a happy person.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

__________

Bob Hicok: “I think of myself as a failed writer. There are periods of time when I’ll be happy with a given poem or a group of poems, but I, for the most part, detest my poems. I like writing. I love writing, and I believe in myself while I am writing; I feel limitless while I’m writing.”

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August 9, 2009

“A Family Matter” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

A FAMILY MATTER

Of course, when my mother asked
that I give my wife a kiss for her, I did so,
telling my wife, I am my mother, kissing you.
My wife’s mother, it turns out, had asked the same,
so of course she told me, I am my mother,
kissing you back. When we informed our mothers later
that they had kissed as lesbians
through heterosexual proxy
beside our cat’s sense that something
like a mouse or with the potential
to be a mouse would eventually move
through the spot she was staring at,
where nothing was or had ever been, as far
as the record shows, my mother asked, was tongue
involved? My wife and I consulted the log
but there was no entry. We shrugged
at our mothers and went about our lives,
though now with an awareness
there are gaps we’ll never fill
that may or may not have tongues in them,
though given a vote, I say yes, tongues, red
like our mouths are where flames go
to be alone.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008

__________

Bob Hicok: “I think of myself as a failed writer. There are periods of time when I’ll be happy with a given poem or a group of poems, but I, for the most part, detest my poems. I like writing. I love writing, and I believe in myself while I am writing; I feel limitless while I’m writing.” (web)

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December 3, 2008

“Lovely Day” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

LOVELY DAY

The satisfaction
finally of a good poop
became a calling
after washing his hands
of his wife to ask
about lunch on the steps
of the museum.
In the shushing
of shoes against marble
as people ran
to art, he enjoyed
his wife’s meat-loaf
more than his mother’s
for the first time, the test
not her meat-loaf for dinner
but how it tastes
suddenly in a sandwich.
He lifted the sandwich
as he might champagne
for a toast: to a long life,
to a beautiful woman, to sincerity
catching fire with the avant-garde.
Instead of going back to work,
she downtown, he up, they held hands
in front of the scooters
at the scooter store, each thinking
of an Italian road,
his wending up a mountain, hers
keeping company with the sea.
They walked so far
they reached where the city
ended, tall grass
rising exactly where the sign
said on one side
that you are leaving, on the other
that you have arrived,
though you, you’ve probably
never been here, where they made love
half in and half out
of the grass, in a place
neither coming or going, though really,
you shouldn’t be watching this,
now should you.

—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008

__________

Bob Hicok: “I think of myself as a failed writer. There are periods of time when I’ll be happy with a given poem or a group of poems, but I, for the most part, detest my poems. I like writing. I love writing, and I believe in myself while I am writing; I feel limitless while I’m writing.” (web)

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