but we have our imaginations

braided:

by Bob Hicok (this is so beautiful - especially the ending. conquerable death)

—-

The poem ends in death so I’ll walk it

backward home. The heart of an 87 year-old woman
starts on July 7th and immediately doctors
syringe morphine from her veins

and her daughter puts a tissue

together and steps from the room. There’s
a general turning from dark to light
and what she said to grandchildren

then she says to grandchildren now

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this is so interesting. also, i love the other 2 poems you just put up too. 

cardiogram:

I.
You have a very masculine face,he says matter-of-factly. I laugh. No one has ever said that about my face. Average, yes. Pretty, sometimes, if they’ve had a drink or two. Handsome, at best, and that’s only because it’s coming from my mother. But masculine? Most people see me as fragile and weak simply by reading my face, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. There’s something to be said about the underdog though.

II.
In my junior year of college, I took an interdisciplinary course about various forms of masculinity. We had a speaker come to class once who preferred to use gender neutral pronouns. At one point, ze was talking about a recently conducted scientific study that concluded—as far as I can roughly remember—that it takes four (or some other arbitrary number not important here) specific chromosomes to make someone appear physically female. Without those four, you appear physically male. Then, ze pointed at me to make an example, “You see him? He has a feminine face. But because he doesn’t have all four of those chromosomes, you can still tell he’s male.”

III.
I blush too easily. When someone looks at me. When someone doesn’t look at me. When I’m anxious. When I’m embarrassed. When I’m out in the cold. When I’m out in the heat. I fill up with red. Further afraid of what people must think of me, the rouge just worsens.

IV.
I admit: Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and just stare, giving myself the same look I’ve given myself all these years.

i love reading everything that he writes. when he’s happy or sad, embarrassed or pensive, whether i’m in a foul mood or a jiggly-jumping-on-sofa ecstasy. i will always be reading if you continue to write.