Poetry: "Romance novel"

By Bob Hicok

I tied myself to a tree with the words, have you seen
this man? At the first shiver of night, the wings


of my lungs cut the bars of my ribs. I remembered
a bedtime, the cloud of pajamas against my sex,


mother’s reading voice a tendril from the window
of a book. Half of us are fog at the autopsy,


the knife sets free a climbing of water into air.
I am equal to the weight of a corner, no more or less.


Since kissing you, all the wires of my skin
are lips. After dark, stones go looking for mouths.


Sometimes I watch you sleep is how gravity works.
Let’s not give up coffee when we die. Minus jewelry,


you’re how I’d be a woman. To be a role model
is to recognize the fallacy in this: if backward


were just forward in reverse, a suicide could be healed
by throwing the body onto the roof. This seems


like a test only because everything that isn’t
confetti does. It’s our third date


that hasn’t really ended, the one where the goal
was to miss all the pins without guttering.