USA

THglnd@aol.com

Photo © Margaretta Mitchell

COMMERCIAL FOR A SUMMER NIGHT

That one night in the middle of the summer
when people move their chairs outside
and put their tvs on the porch
so the dark is full
of mumuring blue lights.

We were drinking beer with the sound off,
watching the figures on the screen--
the bony blonds, the lean- jawed guys
who decorate the perfume and the cars--

the pretty ones
the merchandise is wearing this year.
Alex said, I wish they made a shooting gallery

using people like that.
Greg said, That woman has a PhD in face.

Then we saw a preview for a movie
about a movie star who
is having a movie made about her,
and Boz said, This country is getting stupider every year.

Then Greg said that things were better in the Sixties
and Rus said that Harold Bloom said that Neitzsche said
Nostalgia
was the blank check issued to a weak mind,

and Greg said,
They didn’t have checks back then, stupid,
and Susan said it’s too bad you guys can’t get
Spellcheck for your brains.

Then Greg left and Margaret arrived,
and a breeze carried honeysuckle fumes across the yard
and Alex finished his quart of beer
and Boz leaned back in his chair

and the beautiful people on the tv screen
moved back and forth and back,
looking very much now like shooting gallery ducks.

And we sat in quiet pleasure on the shore of night
as a tide came in and turned and carried us,
folding chairs and all

far out from the coastline of America

in a perfect commercial for our lives.

"Commercial for a Summer Night" appeared in
The Massachusetts Review

WHEN DEAN YOUNG TALKS ABOUT WINE

The worm thrashes when it enters the tequilla
The grape cries out in the wine vat crusher

but when Dean Young talks about wine, his voice is strangely calm.
Yet it seems that wine is rarely mentioned.

He says, Great first chapter but no plot.
He says, Long runway, short flight.
He says, This one never had a secret.
He says, You can’t wear stripes with that.

He squints as if recalling his childhood in France.
He purses his lips and shakes his head at the glass.

Eighty-four was a naughty year, he says,
and for a second I worry that California has turned him
into a sushi eater in a cravat.

Then he says,
This one makes clear the difference
between a thoughtless remark
and an unwarranted intrusion.

Then he says, In this one the pacific last light of afternoon
stains the wings of the seagull pink
at the very edge of the postcard.

But where is the Cabernet of rent checks and asthma medication?
Where is the Burgundy of orthopedic shoes?
Where is the Chablis of skinned knees and jelly sandwiches?
with the aftertaste of cruel Little League coaches?
and the undertone of rusty stationwagon?

His mouth is purple as if from his own ventricle
he had drunk.
He sways like a fishing rod..

When a beast it hurt it roars in incomprehension.
When a bird is hurt it huddles in its nest.

But when a man is hurt,
he makes himself an expert.
Then he stands there with a glass in his hand
staring at nothing
as if he was forming an opinion

"When Dean Young Talks About Wine" appeared in
The American Poetry Review

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

In Delaware a Congressman
accused of sexual misconduct
says clearly at the press conference,
speaking
right into the microphone
that he would like very much
to do it again.

It was on the radio
and Carla laughed
as she painted, Die, You Pig
in red nail polish
on the back of a turtle
she plans to turn loose tomorrow
in Jerry’s back yard.

We lived near the high school that year
and in the afternoons, in autumn,
we could hear the marching band rehearsals
from the stadium,
drums and off-key trumpets, brass
smeared weirdly by the wind;

a ragged Louie Louie
or sometimes, The Impossible Dream.

I was reading a book about pleasure,
how you have to glide through it
without clinging,
like an arrow
passing through a target,
coming out the other side and going on.

Sitting at the picnic table
carved with the initials of the previous tenants;
thin October sunlight
blessing the pale grass--
You would have thought we had it all-

But the turtle in Carla’s hand
churned its odd stiff legs like oars,
as if it wasn’t made for holding still

and the high school band played
worse than ever for a moment
as if getting the song right
were the impossible dream.

"The Impossible Dream" appeared in The American poetry Review

GATE

In order to pass through the Third gate
I had to climb a ladder
made out of icicles

shoved into the hearts
of the people I loved
but having no choice, okay, I did.

In order to get through the Fourth gate,
I had to swim through a lake of sewage
made out of my self-contempt,
the thick crust and the repellent stink,

and in order to get through the Fifth,
I had to turn that waste
into a nourishing barley soup
with no hint that it was ever shit.

Then the Seventh gate was hard
because it consisted
of standing perfectly still
while letting myself be loved---

a sensation of flies
crawling over my face
for minutes more like years

until it felt, finally,
like something right,
like somewhere I could live.

Which brought me to gate number Eight:
spring night, a figure crying on a bed--
and breeze blowing through the windowscreen,

bearing the scent of flowers
from the mountain--
to bathe and comfort her,

doing the job that once was mine.

HOW IT ADDS UP

There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.
And the day I quit the job my father got me,
And the day I stood outside a door
And listened to my girlfriend making love
To someone obviously not me, inside,

And I felt strange because I didn’t care.
There was the morning I was born,
And the year I was a loser,
And the night I was the winner of the prize
For which the audience applauded.

Then there was someone else I met,
Whose face and voice I can’t forget,
And the memory of her
Is like a jail I’m trapped inside,
Or maybe she is something I just use
to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
Plucked from a river of lava
And held aloft on a tightrope
Strung between two scrawny trees
Above a canyon
in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it
Everywhere, for years,
While right behind you,
The footprints you are leaving

Will look like notes of a crazy song.

"How It Adds Up" appeared in The Black Warrior Review

© All Copyright, Tony Hoagland.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.