Bob Heman


from INFORMATION

INFORMATION

The wives of the disciples are never mentioned.



INFORMATION

There are only two chairs and a table in the room that is not really a room. The only light is old light, dribbling from a ceiling fixture that has been there since the space was a factory. He imagines that the walls still hide the machines that once gave this space purpose. We are not inside the space, but are sitting on the loading dock under the stars at a table where our wine still waits to be poured. When the light flickers our faces seem paused in time.



INFORMATION

This is a figurative poem. The trees all look like trees. And the man on the bicycle like a man on a bicycle. There is little room for the imagination to prove itself in more than the ordinary ways. What we see is all that we get. Even if we think there might be something unusual hiding around the corner just out of sight.



INFORMATION

If the basic plot doesn't work you can always add quicksand, or a tree that doesn't cast a shadow.



INFORMATION

They will all die in the last act. Or they will all survive. Their words will always be their last words. Sometimes the stage directions will contain a machine or a bear. Sometimes the night will approach or disappear.



INFORMATION

Something simple, like the moon reflected in a dozen pails of water. The man counting only because it is too hard not to count. His explanation for the trees never fully understood.



INFORMATION

A little town with nothing to do. The sky torn, the river sliced into pieces. The word they give him without a meaning of its own. The windows opened carefully so that nothing alive can escape. His vehicle identified as a car even though it has sails and a rudder. The shaking of his hands never explained.



INFORMATION

The women in her dreams had no thumbs. They reflected the sky and were described by the word “indifference,” by the word “portable,” by the word “aqueduct.” They always seemed to be listening even though they were not able to hear. They were followed by the animals that were incomplete.



INFORMATION

Each word can contain an armadillo before it is opened, each sentence a tree that has not yet been taught how to speak.



INFORMATION

When he left the hotel she could see his two faces. She could see his shorter leg and his hands that were different sizes. She could see the words that trailed behind him like breadcrumbs, and the colors that seemed attached to him whenever he paused. She found him on the menu under the word “entrees,” but felt compelled to order something else.



INFORMATION

I think you will find that your door is locked. That the lenses in your glasses have been removed. That the fire in the fireplace is only painted on. I think you will be called by an unfamiliar name. And that the face in the mirror will never be your own. I think this is the only story you will ever be allowed.



INFORMATION

He was looking for a cloud he saw in a movie when he was a child. He was looking for the car that whizzed by him in a dream. He was trying to remember the words he overheard outside his parents' bedroom. He was trying to remember the shadows the picket fence cast. He was trying to remember when it all began.



INFORMATION

Never learned how the gun worked. How the rain worked. How the hamster worked. Never learned if folding the map would change the course of the river. Or whether opening the door would change the shape of the room. Never understood how the words would be different if the woman spoke them. How the horizon would change if they tried to reach it. Never understood how the words chosen would change what was described.

Bob Heman has never owned a car, fired a gun, or eaten sushi. He lives on an island that isn't always recognized as such by the people who live there.

 
 

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