Tony Hoagland

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures irrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their tuberous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
unpacking the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after love or fame or quantities of money as
                                               unattainable as that moon;

Thus, they do not later
                   have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you:
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

Nature

I miss the friendship with the pine tree and the birds
I had when I was ten.
And it has been forever since I pushed my head
under the wild silk skirt of the waterfall.

What I had with them was tender and private.
The lake was practically my girlfriend.
I carried her picture in my front shirt pocket.
Even in my sleep, I heard the sound of water.

The big rock on the shore was the skull of a dead king
whose name we could almost remember.
Under the rooty bank you could dimly see
the bunk beds of the turtles.

Maybe twice had I said a girl's name to myself;
I had not yet had my weird first dream of money.

Nobody I know mentions these things anymore.
It's as if their memories have been seized, erased, and relocated
among flow charts and complex dinner party calendars.

Now I want to turn and run back the other way
barefoot into the underbrush,
getting raked by thorns, being slapped in the face by branches.

Down to the muddy bed of the little stream
where my cupped hands make a house, and

I tilt up the roof
to look at the face of the frog.

---

Tony Hoagland is the author of three poetry collections, including What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf Press, 2003), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Donkey Gospel (Graywolf Press, 1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award. He teaches at the University of Houston. contents | next