Cold nights make me think
of frozen bagels versus fresh
versus my warm bed versus sleeping
and dying under the overpass
sounding impossibly tragically
funny to me, like overruling
the undertow or high-fiving
the guy who lowballed his offer
on your collection of hawk feathers
and string. In the Museum
of Horrible Outcomes,
the Unfettered Capitalism exhibit
runs ( Read more... )

Calling Him Back From LayoffI called a man today. After he said ( Read more... )

By Bob HicokThe best job I had was moving a stone ( Read more... )

I needed to type this whole poem up to insert it in the appendix of a paper, and that was a lot of work, so I am softening the blow of having to do such labor by also sharing it here. It's in a pretty intense style. If you don't like the first couple stanzas I suspect you may be turned off by the rest ( Read more... )

My wife gave me a tie made of the thread ( Read more... )

Probably I hurt your aesthetic feelings.
How I said a thing, how I held a lamp
to the night. These should walk without us-
words, the dark-is perhaps your view
of existence. I can’t know,

you provide no puppet theater,
no tumbling routine for me to engage
in spirited discourse. That a face
comes with every body, and a body
with every name, makes it seem

( Read more... )

Bob Hicok

Small Measures
I went home and climbed back into my mother.
Origami was involved, I was a crane for the first time
in my life, but my older brother was already there,
claiming dibs. In the desert of her womb, he was dressed
as Peter O’Toole dressed as Laurence of Arabia
admiring his robes in the mirror of his knife.
I left with an understanding ( Read more... )

Hello everyone! Would y'all be kind enough to share your favourite poems about financial struggle? I'm feeling pretty drained due to lack of moneys, and I don't know. Anything helps.
Thank you.

As a giveback, here's some underrated Canadian poetry.

I've tasted my blood by Milton Acorn

If this brain's over-tempered
consider that the fire was want
and the ( Read more... )

If you’re inside me at the hockey game,
you’re inside the arena
when the winning goal’s scored and octopi

thrown onto the ice. A Detroit thing,
as in Cambodia, they don’t play hockey
or call it Cambodian food, it’s just food,

but if you’re inside me and I go
to Angkor Wat, you see how tourism
destroys the past. This love of ours

has done little for ( Read more... )

I told the waiter there was schmutz ( Read more... )