Calling Him Back from Layoff

how are you doing

^{Man with Crow by David Ligare (2015)}

Dear friends,

It’s been an abnormally long time I sent a poem here. Bob came over yesterday (we were all sick for a while so didn’t meet for a couple weeks) and it was wonderful to spend time speaking about our various projects. I also asked him if I could buy bobhicok.com and he said I should do as I please and since he’ll never buy it, it was my choice. So of course I bought the domain and now this Substack is perhaps more official? I hope to make this place an extensive archive of Bob’s work. I’ll soon add more information about his books. I believe that a poet as magnificent as Bob is a once-in-a-generation event and he deserves to be celebrated largely/deeply.

I realize I didn’t mention this here at all but we (at ONLY POEMS) named a fellowship after him. And for the inaugural Bob Hicok Fellowship, we received 1244 submissions. The submissions closed August 31st, so I apologize if you got excited and wanted to send in work. But this will happen every year, so :)

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll let you enjoy this poem below that almost a dozen submitters to the fellowship mentioned was their favorite poem ever.

All good things,

Karan

Calling Him Back from Layoff

by Bob Hicok

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been
 
confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was
 
and it turns out I’m OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars
 
painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that’s a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle
 
for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said
 
he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean
 
and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through
 
with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions
 
as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried
 
with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward
 
than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other
 
and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other
 
forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones
 
hear?

This poem is from Bob Hicok’s Insomnia Diary (University of Pittsburgh Press 2004)