"With apologies to Pauline Kael" by Bob Hicok

In Shawshank, when Andy Dufresne plays Cos­ fan tutteover the PA, many of the men standing in the wide-shotof the prison yard are laid-off steel workers, werelaid-off steel workers, movies requiretheir own special tense, forever present and past,I like knowing this as I like knowing I'm breathinga little bit of helium right now, enough to feelI float, that I am minimally a balloon, but mostlynitrogen, which hugely helps wheat grow, you could planta field of wheat in my lungs and harvest mein days to come, what would it be like to be bread,or to stand laid-off and desperate in Ohio dirtpretending to be hopeless and in-stirin New England dirt, I love that movie for exactlywhat it wants you to love it for, that Mozartdoesn't give up, even now, dead all these yearsbut still here or there or wherever that movie is,I am with it, I want opera and Morgan Freemanand sliding through shit on my team, I want to escapethe nebulous for the exact, and be clearthat whatever that means, I really mean itBob Hicok's new book, Elegy Owed, is due out soon from Copper Canyon.