Bob Hicok returns to Little Engines, and we’re stoked to have him back. Previously, we published an all-timer from Hicok along with a poem only available in the print edition of Issue Nine. You should be aware that
, Steward of Hicok, maintains a Bobstack if you’d like more poems.QUICK UPDATE ON SHOWS:
The early-riser reading series heads to Pygmalion festival in Urbana, Illinois, on Saturday Sept 20 at 10:00am, along with a soon-to-be-announced show in Chicago at Exile in Bookville on Sunday morning, Sept 21.
EULOGY I DIDN'T GIVE (III)
Bob Hicok
I was washing a spoon when I felt myself
never knocking on my parents' door again
the rest of my life, and held the spoon
to my ear to see if it had anything to say.
Like what — people are mostly water,
and love mixes our waters and they can't
be taken apart? A spoon would say that
but not a knife. A knife would say, Cut it out,
get on with your life. Advice.
I don't have any except death
is the beginning of thinking I saw my mom
folding clothes at the laundromat
as I drove past, though when I came
back around, it was a cactus with her smile,
which isn't advice but a story, a moment
trying to be part of an elegy that begins,
To be haunted is to be followed
from the inside out. Everywhere I go,
she is the smell of the sun, he the feeling
of air holding my head in its hands.
And everywhere I stay. That leaves nowhere
to do what it's best at.
THE EULOGY I DIDN'T GIVE (XXIX)
Bob Hicok
He kept a towel beside the bed to spit into.
He was a very mucusy person.
A quality I've not inherited.
I do share his ability to start a lawn mower
on the first pull, but carrying a chair
wherever I go is my own thing.
Three legged. A tripod of repose.
When I travel to the ocean, I want to see dolphins.
When I visit his grave, I expect to see his ghost.
Good thing the chair is very patient.
A long time from now, when everyone I know
has no one left to dream their face,
sitting will still be popular, though not always
to play the cello.
Very few people will ever sit in a chair to do that.
Or stand.
Or float.
Which is too bad.
I'm having an out of body experience.
I'm in my body, and want out.
BOB HICOK’s forthcoming collection is Breathe (Copper Canyon Press 2026)
“To be haunted is to be followed
from the inside out”
Damn.
"I was washing a spoon when I felt myself
never knocking on my parents' door again
the rest of my life"
--took my breath right out of me.