Bob Hicok is the author of Water Look Away (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). He has received a Guggenheim, two NEA Fellowships, the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, nine Pushcart Prizes, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in nine volumes of the Best American Poetry.

Poems by Bob Hicok

Tone poem 2

A sycamore in late October, most of its leaves fallen, 
those remaining crinkled and brown like my old man 
skin, many dropping as I watched, casting shadows 
that caught themselves at the end. The tree 
reminded me of capitalism, of a village 
people were leaving for work in a city 
making shoes in a factory, the future of walking, 
running away from home, kicking a stone along a street 
while dreaming of inventing "Recess In A Can" 
in their hands, until at the end they send money home
to an empty town. A sycamore at the end of fall. 
Desire is strange. I want to explain the popularity 
of death and Taylor Swift to myself or meet a painting 
so shy it faces the wall or upgrade the homeless 
to first class so champagne can tickle their fear of flying 
and dying alone in an alley, but these are all poem ideas, 
not wishes I actually carry around. In life 
I want to end the popularity of death and make a pact 
with everyone such as this: you will do nothing 
to kill me and I will do everything to make you whole, 
up to and including holding your briefcase 
and small intestines, giving you hummingbirds 
to make out with, letting my shoulder brush your shoulder 
while we wait for a bus to sneeze to a stop 
and take us somewhere new to wonder 
where we are. I have this theory 
that I'm really tired of zombie movies, of the truth 
that we groan and stumble through our days 
until someone shoots our brain in the head. In life
and in poems, I start thinking of spring 
in the fall, skip over winter 
and get right to green and the color wheels of flowers, 
the obvious signs that the earth has been humping like mad 
in secret, until it can't keep the secret anymore.
 


Tone poem 3

She gets on my lap and meows plaintively. She's almost 
twenty. I can't tell if she's hungry or asking to die.
Her fur is orange, long and soft. I'm not allowed 
to move until she does on her own: a civil society
depends on rules, plumbing, art, a theory about why 
its cruelties are righteous and not bloodlust. I feel 
and then smell the cold air. Most of her muscle 
is gone, most of her is gone, she is the idea 
of a memory of a cat. She licks my thumb. I type, 
She licks my thumb. There are times when taking out 
every window in the house, putting them on a boat, 
letting birds and rain in, loading the doors 
on the same boat with everything I own, everything 
I might ever own, everything a man could patent 
or burn or assign to an heir, is what I've been doing
for the last thirty years. A kind of shedding.
My hand craves the softness of this cat. I depend
on the mere sky opening its arms every day. 
You wouldn't know, looking at a shovel, how many graves 
it has dug. The sun will be here soon. Like
a good friend, it never knocks, just comes in
and picks up where we were before: burning.
 


Tone poem 4

A more peaceful way of jumping out windows.
Little booze bottles piled in a closet. 
Leaning over a hand of poker that isn't there.
Would I tell you if I saw your cards? 
It depends. Someone takes a picture of the sun
every day at 8:55 for a movie she's making 
called "Everything Is The Same Differently."
For instance, I might roll when I hit the ground, 
or never land, or be so beautiful in my diving
that I live forever in the memory of air. 
Since I've never played poker, 
can I be kicked out of being a man? 
She doesn't have the sun's permission 
but none of us do to live as grass 
beneath its touch. There's a bird 
that gathers blue stuff to woo females, 
the males compete with their blue bounty 
and she decides who the better artist is, 
the better gatherer and arranger of detritus. I mean, 
why not? A more peaceful way to be convinced
that drinking in small doses is a hobby
and not a way of life. Am I drunk? Am I 
a drunk? One tiny edit and I've written 
a pithy autobiography. Cut the story of your life down 
to a tree or a word. I can do both: timber.

SPOTLIGHT ON BOB HICOK

Q: Tell us a bit about your poems in december: Where did they come from? What do they mean to you?

A: My poems only have meaning for me while I’m writing them: I rarely go back to them unless I’m putting a book together, and mostly have a relationship with their birth. Writing poems is my job — job in the best sense: something I like to do, that makes me feel more connected to life — so the existence of these poems, especially the first two, means I did my job on the days they were written. I say that because I think they work, and by work I mean the parts, the moments or images, coalesce into an experience that’s unique to the poem, largely an experience of my mind making the poem. Maybe the poems I like to write are the stories of themselves, of my mind in motion trying to figure out what’s on my mind. It’s interesting to me that this answer focuses on the words “job” and “work”.

Q: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on these pieces? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.

A: I resist this kind of question because my answer always feels flippant, even though I’m telling the truth: I turned the computer on and started to write. DOS computer, WordPerfect 4.2. I don’t sit down with a subject in mind, or an image, a line. I type the first thing that occurs to me, and if it interests me, respond to that bit of text. If it doesn’t interest me, I delete it and start over. I think I’m trying to figure out why these starts appeal to me, to discover what’s inside them, how they might unfold. It’s a version of improv or sport, a kind of performance that never repeats, even though I bring the same concerns and interests to my desk. Personality abides (like the Dude) but is full of tides and undertows. So whatever sameness there is to my poems, there’s also the variation inherent to writing a particular poem on a particular day. I don’t think I answered your question, so I feel happy.

Q: What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?

A: Lit mags are the loam of the endeavor. Or to go another way, comprise almost a farm system, as in baseball. People get their start there. And while many who publish in lit mags won’t go on to have books, quite a few will make it to the show. (To be clear – I’m not a baseball fan. 162 games is about 100 too many. And there’s way too much spitting in baseball, and maybe not enough crying.) Lit mags are also a great testing ground, kind of like open mics. They reveal new voices and get those people hooked on others reading their stuff.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Poems. Brilliant response, no? And I just put a new book together called Breathe.

Q: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?

A: Robbing banks. Not of money but those pens chained to counters. I like to set them free.