Poetry by Anna K. Crooks

he has bought an excavator and
his thing now is that he has an excavator
and his life now is one of excavation

he says, “if you want
come to philly and we can make a hole”

i don’t know if i will get this hole for free
or if i will have to pay him for the hole
but it seems unfair to expect a free hole for nothing

he says this can be an art hole,
that we can use this hole for art
and i try to think of the art i can make with this hole
what i can bury and have it mean something
the poem of the hole

the first thing that comes to mind is my
self—to bury myself and have that be the art
and when i never or eventually come out of the hole
my existence or lack thereof will be the art too

but then i think,
“hasn’t that been done before?”

he says holes are the kind of thing
that people will pay big money for
and i have to agree that makes sense

i think i will fill the hole with words
that i will read it a poem and fill it with words and bury them

i think “what kind of poem is a hole poem?
what kind of poem is empty and full too?
what kinds of words are hole words,
what kinds of things fill pits?”

whatever the hole could be filled with, it is already full of questions.

i want to read a poem that longs to fill and longs to be filled too.

i imagine all the things that can be taken from the earth and he
suggests we make a time capsule, or maybe, i just imagine he
suggests it. i think “how do you make a fossil by hand?
what is a relic? what IS forever, what forever being?”

i want to ask him where do you put all the hole stuff
the stuff that come out of the hole and where do you
keep an excavator overnight?
i obviously don’t know very much about holes
and this unknowing makes me so sad

the disappearingness and the lingering—
i am quiet for a long time

these guys found an evil hole in the woods
and they’re just fucking around with it
chucking all sorts of things in it to see
how the evil hole will react

there are people making me insane everywhere i go
but that’s normal

the evil hole can’t be held responsible
for everything that is bad and weird

the fish is alive but it’s rotting too
the snake is trapped between the net and the fence
the turtle is so far away it seems as small as a coin
the pigeons are sunbathing on the cobblestones in the square
that’s normal too that’s natural

you hold a big bouquet of flowers but no joy
how is that even humanly possible
a big bouquet of beautiful flowers
and no joy?

i hold together all the flowers in the known universe
my grasp is so vast i can hold all the flowers
in the known universe in the largest bouquet imaginable
the bouquet is so big but it’s easy for me to hold—
i only get exactly what i can handle

i cut my fingernails i cut my toenails too
i cut the ends off my hair
i cut the hems off my jeans
i cut a pup off roberta’s aloe
i feed all the cuttings to the evil hole
i hope it will make me a million
more me’s from my refuse to take
over my life and run it for me
i will give them each one flower
and the flowers of the universe
dispersed will make life
brighter i think brighter, but
my machinations come to nothing.
they just make the hole more full instead

the evil hole one day will be completely full
all of the things they put in it will fill it
we will cover it with earth and plant it
with flowers and forgetting the hole
will begin slowly and naturally

i can see forever into the future.
forgetting the hole will begin slowly
proceed naturally casting
the hole into oblivion, darkness
nothing