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TWO SIDES OF A COIN
Using the Freedom of Information Act,
I made the sun tell me what it’s thinking—
I am a busy busy busy busy bee—
and told it about skin cancer,
which brought home a point
most of us know but forget:
even when the sun wants to,
it can’t cry, the moon can’t cry,
whales sound as if they’re crying
when they’re not, and people are alone
in crying at the sad movies we make
to make us cry at sad movies.
We’re also the only creatures
who remember going to the beach
with a pail that had a picture
of a little girl
at the beach with a pail,
who had a similar pail
and a little girl all her own,
and so on, infinity
digs and digs its holes
and the credits run
and we sniffle and adjust
to the light of reason
we have every reason
to fear doesn’t want us
and will never leave us alone.
—Bob Hicok
Copyright © 2018 by Oberlin College.
May not be reproduced without permission.
YOUR MOTHER: FRANZ KAFKA. MY FATHER: A HOLE RIPPED IN THE NIGHT.
When we met the hot song on your lips did not stand a chance
against the things I wanted to do to you, things that would damage
your person in delicate, irreparable ways. Now Wednesday
evenings are filled with quiet cars caressing the curb, dead voices of distant
children, some hot hum of normalcy. And the dress I wore
was this weary world. But in the future of our inevitability,
there are broken shopping carts. And you have buried the cat’s bones in the yard,
so when I move to admire the gazebo, to touch the unruly lavender bush
and break its fruit to pieces, I cross a delicate death and arrive unscathed.
—Libby Burton
Copyright © 2018 by Oberlin College.
May not be reproduced without permission.
HEAT WAVE (POEM FOR NOVICA TADIC PERHAPS)
It was so hot people were unzipping
their people costumes
even the phantom limbs had melted
the cats were on strike
the postman said it’ll be the short pants today
I was assigned to the dead letter office
he said now count the years between names
count the miles between towns
silent as shipwrecks
when I finished snow was falling through the roof
through the ribs of the dead
the letters were fed to prisoners
he said otherwise they will outlast this country
the only lasting monument to our lives
—Mark Wagenaar
Copyright © 2018 by Oberlin College.
May not be reproduced without permission.
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