BOB HICOK
A friend comes from out of town.
His wife left him to live alone in a loft with books.
His Marley t-shirt isn’t prepared for December,
and he smells like whiskey at thirty-five thousand feet.
His eyes are burning in the puddle of his face.
The bag he forgot at home is probably empty.
He says hi like the last air out of a tire.
I show him the windmill on the way from the airport,
the blades are cotton and white, they are angels
spinning.
I neglect to point at the trailer in which a man
hung his wife and baby and shot himself
in the groin to confess and bleed out.
Three deer jump in front of us across the road,
emphasizing the weightless parts of existence.
He touches my wife’s hand hello beside a Catawba tree.
The fire in the fireplace is talking to itself.
He falls asleep and twitches in a black chair
like a shot animal not yet convinced
of the bullet.
Two hours later, he comes into the kitchen
wearing the slept-in bed of his face.
My wife is cutting carrots and peppers and onions,
her hands as fast as an auction.
I put on music which is safely out of words, out of love
and missing and needing back.
He sets the table and gives himself three spoons.
Salad, bread, pasta, green beans.
He touches the lettuce with a spoon as if to reassure it
his indifference isn’t personal,
and I feel the hole of him growing.
He says his wife’s name by stroking the soft wood
of the table.
The nine o’clock windows surrounding us are mirrors.
With seven days of beard, I resemble forgetting.
My wife goes to bed.
He picks up her napkin and tells me I’m lucky,
but I remember falling to the floor when a woman left me,
how good it felt, cool and staying down there
for three years.
When the wine’s gone he switches to vodka.
He makes it outside in time to get on his knees and throw up
as snow halos his face.
Snow makes it feel like the world is trying as hard as it can
to listen.
We sit, wet-assed and shivering.
He screams and of course the mountains say so what.
What I like about the air is it heals as you crack it open.
He makes a snow angel so I do to keep his company.
In minutes, snow fills our angels like heaven wants them back.
I look at the smoke of his breath, this is what burning down,
what fuck it looks like.
He takes off his ring and swallows it.
Tomorrow, he’ll search his shit for gold.