from New Yorker this week (the doublespacing not in the original):


A History of Origami by Bob Hicok


two women in three days        

        cried on the green bench in the park

                where i found a dollar

                folded into a boat.

 

i thought it was the crying bench and cried

        on the crying bench

                when it became available.

                                

                                                i cried

by thinking of all the people

        who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s

        window, the bead-seller’s,

                who sells beads for purposes

                i find hard to list: necklaces,

                        the hanging of strings of beads

        in doorways, the owning of beads

                                                just in case.

 

breaking a shop window with a piece of shale

        the size of my heart, a piece of shale

                on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart

                        but my feelings of my heart,

                                                since i’ve never seen my heart,

        would set something free.

 

i don’t know what that something is

                but it would be free.

 

and my heart would have survived its travels

        through glass, its jagged voyage

        through my reflection.

 

you see now why i cried: none of this is real.

 

until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart

                among the ruins of your reflection?

                   i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy

                insists.

 

it insists

        that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,

        that i move

as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable

                to move, that i stop.

 

it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird

        or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird

                        in a dollar boat.

 

which is to say

                i believe origami arrives

                        when we need it most.

 

i can’t prove this but i can’t prove

                you’re a good person though i suspect

        you’re a good person.

 

you who opened the door.

 

you who tipped your hat.

 

you who ran into the fire and carried

        the fire safely out.

great read

indeed. His collection 'animal soul' is very good.

ooooo la la what an absolute treat to read.  thanks so much for sharing this with us.

cheryl

the poem itself seems an orgami itself from the precision of simple details, not ornate but crisp words.  the dollar became a boat; the words a poem.