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Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained | |||
Bob Hicok’s "Her My Body" is a deeply intimate, tender meditation on love, fear, and the precariousness of the body. The poem moves between the mundane—petting a dog, drying hair, flying to Brussels—and the existential—mortality, pain, and the desperate human need to believe in small moments of safety. Hicok balances vulnerability with humor, crafting a narrative in which the body is both a site of affection and anxiety, a source of comfort and a reminder of inevitable loss. The poem begins with a juxtaposition of the simple and the ominous: “The dog licks my hand as I worry / about the left nipple / of the woman in the bathroom.” The act of being licked by a dog—a gesture of familiarity, love, and presence—is set against the speaker’s rising concern about his partner’s health. The contrast between these two realities underscores a central theme of the poem: how life’s smallest, most reassuring moments exist alongside unspoken fears, how something as ordinary as a sore nipple can trigger an existential spiral. The next lines present the couple engaged in an investigation, searching “for diagonal cuts / or discoloration / or bite marks from small insects / that may be in our bed.” The specificity of their search—the attention to minute details—reflects both their shared intimacy and their attempt to rationalize the unknown. The mention of “small / though disproportionately / strong insects” adds a layer of humor, exaggerating the idea that something tiny could have caused harm, but it also reveals a coping mechanism: they would rather believe in the threat of bugs than face the possibility of something worse. Their bed is described as “a good bed, a faithful bed”, as though it, too, has agency, as though it is something they can trust. This personification suggests that the bed represents stability, a refuge. Yet, even this safe space is momentarily subject to doubt—it is not immune to suspicion. This brief undermining of security mirrors the larger tension of the poem: love and faith are real, but they do not erase the possibility of loss. The poem then shifts into an extended reflection triggered by the sound of the hair dryer: “The blow dryer sounds like a jet / taking off.” This comparison leads the speaker into an anecdote about flying to Brussels, where “people began / the journey happy but ended / with drool on their shirts.” This description captures a common experience of travel—excitement giving way to exhaustion—but in the context of the poem, it suggests something more: the way life, too, begins in hope and gradually wears us down. The speaker notes that his partner has “never been to Brussels” but is “drying her hair / while having red thoughts / about what the pain in her nipple means.” The color red here is significant—often associated with passion, danger, blood. The woman’s thoughts, like the speaker’s, are circling around something deeper, something unspeakable. Then comes an understated moment of existential weight: “The body of the woman / has many ways to cease / being the body of the woman.” This line strips mortality to its most fundamental truth—the body, once whole, once her, can become something else, something uninhabitable. This is a terrifying thought, one that the speaker does not elaborate on but allows to linger. It is followed by an immediate pivot to the personal: “I have one way / to be happy / and she is that way.” This declaration of love, simple and direct, serves as an anchor against the previous thought. If the fear is that her body could fail, then the counterpoint is that she is his happiness, his reason for existing. The contrast between these lines heightens the stakes—the fear of losing her is not just abstract, but deeply personal. From here, the poem shifts toward an imagined future, one where they travel to Brussels together, “We would not be put off by the drool.” The phrase suggests an acceptance of imperfection, of the unglamorous aspects of life, of shared experience. The mention of “the little boy / who saved Brussels when he peed on a fire” refers to the famous statue Manneken Pis, a humorous yet oddly fitting image in a poem about bodily vulnerability. The speaker envisions them “romantic in public places”, reinforcing his desire to move beyond the moment of fear and into a life shared fully. Then, another grounding shift: “For the moment / these desires can best be furthered / by petting a dog.” This return to the present moment, to the comfort of something immediate and tangible, is both practical and poignant. It suggests that, in the face of uncertainty, the best one can do is engage with what is real, what is present—small acts of love, small acts of touch. The poem’s final section introduces an existential coping mechanism: “I’m also working on this theory. / That sometimes a part of the body / just hurts.” This attempt to rationalize pain—to separate it from something catastrophic—is an act of self-soothing. The speaker proposes that pain could be assigned to “the little toe or appendix”, parts of the body that are “vestigial or redundant”, things we can live without. This wishful thinking reflects the desperate human instinct to contain fear, to delegate pain to something nonessential. Then, in one of the most powerful moments of the poem, the speaker confronts the word he has been avoiding: “I have no reason / to use the word cancer / while petting a dog.” The unspoken dread—the fear that the soreness in her nipple is something more—has been lingering throughout the poem, but here it is finally named, only to be immediately dismissed. The act of not saying the word earlier in the poem gave it more power; now, the act of saying it is an attempt to strip it of that power. But the phrase “while petting a dog” suggests that this denial is fragile, that the only thing holding it together is distraction. The final lines of the poem introduce a different theory, one rooted in time rather than the body: “There is a piece of a second / during which a jet is not flying / nor is it on the ground.” This liminal space—the brief instant between departure and ascent—becomes a metaphor for a space where nothing bad can happen, where loss is suspended. The speaker clings to the idea that “no one can die / inside that piece of a second”, that there might exist moments outside of time where suffering does not reach. The final invitation—“If you are comforted / by this thought you are welcome / to keep it”—is an offering, a recognition that sometimes, belief in small, irrational safeties is all we have. Hicok’s "Her My Body" is a masterful exploration of love in the face of uncertainty. It captures the quiet terror of fearing for a loved one’s health, the helplessness of not knowing, and the ways we soothe ourselves with distractions, humor, and imagined futures. The poem acknowledges mortality but resists despair, clinging instead to love, touch, and the fleeting comforts of presence. It is, in the end, a profoundly human poem—about the impossibility of control, the necessity of hope, and the strange, fragile theories we construct to hold ourselves together.
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