Maybe the Saddest Thing

by Marcus Wicker

  cream city review / “Love Letter to Bruce Leroy”

  DIAGRAM / “Ars Poetica in the Mode of J-Live”

  Harpur Palate / “Love Letter to RuPaul”

  Hayden’s Ferry Review / “Everything I Know About Jazz I Learned from Kenny G”

  jubilat / “Love Letter to Justin Timberlake,” “Self-Dialogue Watching Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip”

  Minnesota Review / “I’m a Sad, Sad Man. So Sad”

  Missouri Review (Online) / “Love Letter to Flavor Flav”

  Muzzle / “Love Letter to Pam Grier”

  Mythium / “Self-Dialogue Camping at Yellowwood State Forest,” “When faced with the statement ‘there are more black men in jail than college,’ I think Order of Operations”

  PANK / “About the Time Two Ducks Advised Me on Matters of the Flesh,” “Oblivious Spring”

  Southern Indiana Review / “1998,” “Interrupting Aubade Ending in Epiphany,” “Self-Dialogue Staring at a Mirror”

  Sou’wester / “Love Letter to Jim Kelly”

  Vinyl Poetry / “I remember the scene in that movie,” “The Light,” “Something Like Sleep.”

  Many thanks to D. A. Powell for selecting this book for the National Poetry Series and for his sincere, thoughtful support.

  Thanks to the National Poetry Series and HarperCollins Publishers for the gift of a book. Special thanks to Michael Signorelli at Harper Perennial for his eternal patience and editorial expertise.

  I owe a tremendous debt to all my teachers, especially Maurice Manning, Ross Gay, and Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Their incredible, generous teaching opened up a world for me.

  Nothing but love to my friends and colleagues at Indiana University.

  Endless thanks to the Fine Arts Work Center; for the time and space; for the sea; for the beautiful people you placed in my life.

  For the love and support, much gratitude to Cave Canem, where many of these poems began.

  I am grateful to the following teachers and friends for commenting on this book or its poems at various stages of development: Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte, Ed Roberson, Maura Stanton, Claudia Rankine, Colleen McElroy, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Jacob Shores-Arguello, Myron Michael Hardy, Douglas Brown, and Cheri Johnson. Thanks to francine harris for allowing me to borrow her title “I remember the scene in that movie.”

  Thanks to William Paine, DeAntae Prince, Chad Anderson, Mike Rowe, and Ashley Rutter for holding me down.

  Thanks to Ryan Teitman.

  Thanks to Raleigh Lee and Kelly Wilson.

  Thanks to Jeff Kass for the spark; to Jason Olsen for the push.

  Above all, thank you to my parents and family. This book is theirs.

  About the Author

  Marcus Wicker’s poems have appeared in Poetry, jubilat, Third Coast, Ninth Letter, and Crab Orchard Review, among other journals. The recipient of a 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, he has also held fellowships from Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Indiana University, where he received his MFA. Marcus is assistant professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana.

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  Credits

  Cover design/collage by Richard Ljoenes

  Cover art: Bruce Lee by Chris Achilleos;

  Flavor Flav illustration by Hannah Buck;

  escalator by Exstream 3D/Pycomall;

  all other art by iStockPhoto

  Copyright

  MAYBE THE SADDEST THING. Copyright © 2012 by Marcus Wicker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-06-219101-4

  EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062191021

  12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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