Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Brent Fisk
Brown Jug Tavern, August 1994



We become like crows when we see

a knife, want to snatch it from a hand,

take it back to the bones of a nest.



A knife never goes into a body cleanly,

always gets stuck on a rib, looks like

a drunkard’s slow punch.



One night below the streetlamp

and an orange moon, I saw a man unzipped,

swear he grinned as he went down.



Some say they never saw a thing, only the dark

oil that leaked from his knocking body. Two girls,

half-lit, hair teased high, wobbled through the blood

so that cops had to mark their high-heeled prints

with tiny yellow cups.



The man with the knife had stuffed his hands deep

in his pockets, but did not whistle while he walked away.

With great care he pulled his jacket tight,

stepped gingerly along the sidewalk

through a starfield of shattered glass.



When he slipped into the narrow alley,

he pulled the last light in behind him, trumpet vine

stirring on the brick walls above him

as if he’d closed a door.
Brent Fisk is an unstoppable force in the poetry world, whose poems
have appeared almost everywhere.  New work will be appearing in
Greensilk Journal, Cause and Effect, and Mimesis. This is his third
appearance in HCR. Brent did not write this bio.