Two Poems By Bob Hicok

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Excerpts from my difficulty telling jokes

A shadow of a penis walks into a bar. No. A bar
realizes it’s a Rabbi. No. A pope shits on a bear. Yes.
A pope shits on a bear. Now we need a new pope. We have
the bloody pointy hat just not the pope. A bear
walks into a bar and asks what goes with pope. Fries,
of course. How many light bulbs does it take to screw in
the dark? Four. One to be left on in your head, one in mine,
one to be smashed against the dark husk of night
in celebration when the humping and lowing is over,
the other to light the telling of the story of a christening
that sounds like a brittle rain falling from a broken sky.

Elegy with lies

This lost person I loved. Loved for a hundred years.
When I find her. Find her in a forest. In a cabin
under smoke and clouds shaped like smoke. When I find her
and call her name (nothing) and knock (nothing)
and build a machine that believes it’s God and the machine
calls her name (nothing) and knocks (nothing).
When I tear the machine down and she runs from the cabin
pointing a gun at my memories and telling me
to leave, stranger, leave, man of hammers.
When I can’t finish that story. When I get to the gun
pointed at my head. When I want it to go off.
When everything I say to anyone all day long
is bang. That would be today. When I can’t use her name.
All day long. Soft as cotton, tender as kiss. Bang.

Bob Hicok’s new book is Elegy Owed

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Open up, here come more poems! You may contact the editor at [email protected].