Bob Hicok

This is the first collection of poetry by Bob Hicok that I've read. I picked this book off the shelf because of the cover photo. The photo is from the interactive art installation The Event of a Thread by Ann Hamilton. I loved this art installation. And I loved this poetry collection. These poems are about racism, white privilege, income inequality, sexuality in marriage, and the current US political environment.

As a translator I'm a pretty good turtle

The rain sounds like a child taking a bath.

We're at a kitchen table translating Arash's poem from Farsi,
which I don't know, to English, which he hardly speaks.

So far what's clear is we both like tennis,
that there are too many English words for gun, that his daughter
needs to put a plastic turtle on my bald head
because we look related, and that I have to pretend
I know something about war or his poems will sound
like his daughter isn't missing an eye, like everyone lived.

So I ask him to draw what it felt like, the day the poem
was born, and he snaps a pencil doing so, which makes me wonder
if I have anything to offer as a friend, if a bucket,
dropped down the well of my mouth, would ever reach water.

We stop when the only line he asks his wife about
makes her leave the room, makes him follow, and when he comes back,
he touches his words and asks how we say......
then makes a fist and explodes it into an open hand
above his heart.

How do I say we've never known how to say that:

burn a dictionary in front of him, sharpen the pencil
and make it bleed while drawing a truer face
on my face, cut a hole in the roof and live there
under the rain, the touch of sky, ask him to beat me to death
and offer the same, beg him to carry me in his eyes
as far as he can look us away from this life?

I worry for him and his daughter and his wife,
for everyone when it's this easy to bring war
to a place of bread, but Arash wants his poem to live
in two languages, and this turtle will do his best
to give it that second mouth.… (meer)