Yonder

Bob Hicok

The holes in a thing, independentfrom the thing itself, are alikein that an absence is borderedby a presence, else it’s not a holebut a dent or bump or some othertopographical species, which is howa sick heart can be relatedto a healthy window screen,a shot man to a well, and all mouthsand all hungers are cousinsto each other and the scream,those holes we tear in the airto get to the other sideof whatever this is, pleaselet it be enough for me,the you and the trees of it, the manplaying his trumpet at sunsetacross the valley for everyonewho has died in the plague,and the horses that ignore him,and the moon lifting its holeof light above the horizonbefore the dark arriveswith its meticulous embrace.

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Author photo of Bob Hicok

Bob Hicok’s latest book is Water Look Away (Copper Canyon Press, 2023).

Fall 2024

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Editor in Chief
William D. Waltz

Deputy Editor
Brett Astor

Assistant Editor
Kyle Constalie

Associate Editors
Steven Lee Beeber
William Stobb
Paula Cisewski

Conduit is a biannual literary journal that is at once direct, playful, inventive, irreverent, and darkly beautiful. Despite common sense and the laws of economics, Conduit has been thwarting good taste, progress, and consensus for over twenty years. Conduit publishes distinctive voices of literary merit—experimental to accessible, established to emerging—in snazzy volumes, featuring work that demonstrates originality, intelligence, courage, and humanity. Conduit champions a fresh mix of writers. If that isn’t enough, Conduit reaches beyond the literary by interviewing astronomers, ethno-botanists, artists, graphic artists, and historians, et cetera, believing a vigorous imagination is one that is cross-pollinated by diverse areas of human inquiry.

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