Dropping the Euphemism
by Bob Hicok
He has five children, I’m papa
to a hundred pencils.
I bought the chair he sat in
from a book of chairs,
staplers and spikes
that let me play Vlad the Impaler
with invading memos. When I said
I have to lay you off
a parallel universe was born
in his face, one where flesh
is a loose shirt
taken to the river and beaten
against rocks. Just
by opening my mouth I destroyed
his faith he’s a man
who can think honey-glazed ham
and act out the thought
with plastic or bills. We sat.
I stared at my hands, he stared
at the wall staring at my hands.
I said other things
about the excellent work he’d done
and the cycles of business
which are like
the roller-coaster thoughts
of an oscilloscope. All this time
I saw the eyes of his wife
which had always been brown
like almonds but were now brown
like the crust of bread. We walked
to the door, I shook his hand,
felt the bones pretending
to be strong. On his way home
there was a happy song
because de Sade invented radio,
the window was open, he saw
delphinium but couldn’t remember
the name. I can only guess.
Maybe at each exit
that could have led his body
to Tempe, to Mars, he was tempted
to forget his basketball team
of sons, or that he ever liked
helping his wife clean carrots,
the silver sink turning orange.
Running’s natural to most animals
who aren’t part
of a lecture series on Nature’s
Dead Ends. When I told him,
I saw he was looking for a place
in his brain to hide
his brain. I tried that later
with beer, it worked until I stood
at the toilet to make my little
waterfall, and thought of him
pushing back from a bar
to go make the same noise.
“Dropping the euphemism” from Insomnia Diary by Bob Hicok © 2004
Published over on Poetry Foundation
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