Dress for Success

“they'd lost themselves to being lost / in wanting to be what they're not: music.”

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Dress for Success

by Bob Hicok

If not for me, scarecrow thinks, the birds would eat it all,

then the fog would open its mouth, the oceans, the sky,

the stars, and we would be devoured by the force

that turns the volume of crickets and waterfalls

all the way up, that makes baby planets and galaxies from dust

and dust from us. Only then he remembered that he's not us,

he's him, that he could never audition to be the person

who says, Isn't it weird that you can't actually go spelunking

in your own mind no matter the ropes you buy from REI?

He looks at the straw escaping his shoulders, his waist,

and wants a cigarette more than ever, to tell someone, anyone,

a person or coyote, what he's learned, that hanging out

is like ninety percent of the job. Wind teases him again

for being stuck, the smell of rain and lightning

on its breath, and he wants to go to Spain more than ever.

If I could only watch two women tango, he thinks,

taking turns leading, sharing the center stage

of stamping feet and breath, I'd be able to hold their hearts

in my mouth, and from twenty feet away, taste their pulses,

solely because they'd lost themselves to being lost

in wanting to be what they're not: music. After that,

all he could think about was how much he'd like a crow

to scratch where it itches. Everywhere.

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Note: This poem previously appeared in Granta.