the bell within...

Bob Hicok

Flaw


Hands, the fit of them, to the neck. God’s making

an end for the arm, murder, His, forgive me, my

pronoun, my rage, if in practice I lift them

to the window, morning’s jet mirror, who, and what

you did, the cracked bell within, is not evil, but to ring it

is


                  - from Michigan Quarterly Review and Poetry Daily

*

A daring little piece. The control of punctuation is superb. A cry. A recognition of weakness. The lifting of the hands to the window, an incomplete act of the creative nature. Potential, but nothing more. Always disassociated, fragmented, confined.