Hookey

Poetry by Jacob Oet

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Jacob Oet is the author of five chapbooks, most recently Nightshirt from Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in such journals as Fugue, Cream City Review, Yemassee, and The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. He was recently chosen by Edward Hirsch as runner-up for the Abraham Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize.

The porcupine series began on a Greyhound as an attempt to gain some control over the subject of my poems. The porcupine's personality developed quickly, and he became in my poems a best friend, an annoyance, a brother, a womanizer, a mischievous pseudo-antagonist, a side-kick, a conversation partner. Throughout the series, the porcupine and I recite the novel wonders of childhood, how even the same things, day after day, appeared different. Somewhere before the beginning of "Hookey," it begins to dawn on us that we're growing up, that, slowly, the inevitable is happening: things are beginning to get boring. We're both afraid of this, but unwilling to admit it, and so the poem kicks off with us taking initiative and trying hard to look at things as we once did without trying.

The porcupine and I skip class to sail to America.

We leave New York for New York, two hours later.

“Here we are,” he says, “fresh off the ferry.”

We walk the sunlit avenues, hands in our pockets.

We sing old Russian songs. Everything looks different.

Our hearts, and their dozen gold disks, feel

heavy in the shadow and light in the sun.

Night falls, and the streets blink as strangely

as the familiar fireflies above our chimney.

Our new mothers tuck us in as always.

The porcupine and I smile at each other,

noting the differences between the countries of

one day and the next. As we harden into sleep

our hearts melt: stormy, sunlit oceans, tossing

white braids of froth that fish leap after,

filthy-finned, swelling white-yellow eyes,

mouths gulping through the air and the errors.