Poetry Magazine
A Shopkeeper’s Story
I sell one bristle brushes. People
seeking two bristle brushes I send
to the guy on Amsterdam, who’s in a rush.
I may have one customer a year
for my one bristle brushes, a one-eyed
lover of tanagers, she may have
one dollar to spend in the moment
light’s neither day’s or night’s,
but one’s where infinity begins. Whoever
she is, she’s always painting barbules,
I’m always thinking, no one will notice
that they notice this, that her tanagers
move, that everything’s alive. We talk
care and feeding of the one
bristle brush. Care exists. I thrive.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).
Biography
Bob Hicok was born in 1960 in Michigan and worked for many years in the automotive die industry. A published poet long before he earned his MFA, Hicok is the author of several collections of poems, including The Legend of Light, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry in 1995 and named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year; Plus Shipping (1998); Animal Soul (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; . . .
Poems by Bob Hicok
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Activities, Jobs & Working
POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic
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Poem of the Day: Feeling the draft
Bob Hicok Reflects on Economic Hardships in Michigan
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