Bob Hicok is the author of three books of poems; his third, Animal Soul, is due out in 2001. New poems are set
to appear in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, Southern Review and The Best of
the Pushcart Prize XXV.





My Idea of Simplicity May Not be Yours

The idea is to bake a loaf of bread.
The idea is to entice the makers of bread
with jam. Jam in a glass jar
blown at the end of a 3 foot pipe, glass
glowing orange and cooling
for strawberries picked by hand.
And sugar for the strawberries
picked by hand. I touch
seven hundred thousand secrets each day.
I see a blood capped mushroom,
I have a hole in my spine I can't name.
The idea is to leave my clothes
piled on a mountain. Black tail deer
will sniff them and run away.
I will sniff them and run away.
Death is a flower with the mouth
of a wolf. I'm getting older,
my skin is turning scrotal.
The idea is to make a hat
of this extra skin. When I have
no teeth I'll dream of bread, of jam,
I'll cry in the hospital
because I never learned to bake.
The window will be plastic.
There's no hope in knowing what kind
of plastic. The idea
is to know if there's death
in the blood capped mushroom or flavor.
I will bake bread. Too long ago
my head stopped being a friend.







What I wrote on the Miss America application
in the section where they ask you to say a little
about yourself

I have one foot longer than the other,
three miles longer than the other.
Conversationally I'm more of a dalmatian
than rottweiler. Because I'm always
falling in love I carry a rose bush
in my pants. I'd like to live
in a desert with a view of the ocean
surrounded by trees with quick access
to major highways. I speak two
dead languages fluently.
I know seven reasons not to make love
in the A & W parking lot
but have you ever held a cold
mug of root beer anywhere other
than your hand? I'm good with money,
money & matches, matches & insurance.
I require some assembly. Most
of the time I'm with you,
I'm listening to sprinklers
or playing Monopoly in my head.
I like the car & Baltic Avenue,
spending time in such a clean
jail, that you can destroy
someone's life while sitting
on the floor with cocoa and then
go out and look at real hotels,
the ones with all their lights
flicked on
up & down the Milky Way.
I do not have the breasts you want
but believe in world peace
& will wear a dress & sing Lollipop
Lollipop to prove it. Something off
the shoulder. Something that looks
more like jeans and a t shirt.
My real dream is to be Miss
Congeniality. Manners were invented
by Leonardo DaVinci as an apology
for inventing better war. If I
could do anything I'd give
everyone a screened-in porch.
Good socks. Someone in the other room
looking at you asleep on the couch
who can't remember a better time
than now.







Northern Creation Myth

I'm so tired the boy said to the dog.
The dog said to the boy this is the way
with life. They were at a river
and the river was tired and the grass
fed by the river and the sun
because it had worked so hard to make
the world green. They all fell asleep,
even the sun. When they woke
it was winter and the river
was frozen. The dog created mittens.
The boy invented yellow snow.