Research: Journals
The Journal, Issue 30.1
Prose: Dilapidated
by Bob HicokI didn’t see the stray cats this morning
in the old shed with no front wall
but with two chairs and three doors on the floor
just waiting for a house to build its life
around them. Now it will trouble me
that there are three holes out there
alone and three doors eager to fill them
with knocking and I have done
nothing in over a year to satisfy our need
for closure. I know someone who was a passenger
in a car with a doctor. They drove by a man’s head
in a windshield and the eyes that stayed
in the head were still working and stared
as the doctor said someone else will stop.
I called my friend who dreams the eyes
are in his drink at a party and blinking
and asked him what stray cats eat and he thought
stray mice. Most of my conversations
sound like the inside of a bottle of hand lotion,
like two people seeking greater softness
by sharing whatever noises escape their brains
wearing the disguises of words.
I was going to tear the shed down and put up
a space where a shed had been but I’m thinking
I’d rather have breakfast and take my friend
to see a waterfall that’s seventy-eight
feet high so he can have a new dream
of getting tired on the way to what looks like water
killing itself. When he gets home
and turns on the faucet, he’ll feel better
about the healing properties of time.
This is all it takes to help each other—a waterfall,
a pink can of salmon-flavored cat food with goo
on the top like you’d clean off the engine
of your car and the imagination to say here
kitty kitty kitty when a possum
notices that nowhere on the can does it say
who deserves to be saved.
