Rebecca Hoogs – Vandal Poem of the Day

by Rebecca Hoogs

Running down Ravenna today three ladies

with walkers stoppered the path. I prepared

to swing into the street but they single-filed

as I increased my pace around them—

legs machining, ponytail tassling—

a showoffy momentary Atalanta

as if to prove what? That I was more alive?

Aliver, a liver? Would remember this

when I was walkered? I knew I wouldn’t

unless I did this to it. So here it is,

end-aged you-me—-a spring Sunday

in 2015. I’m middle-aged, A is beginning-

aged (two years, two months);

the cherries starting at A again, too.

But this week a plane was felled

into the Alps and I keep putting myself on it,

keep feeling my stomach drop out

of the sky as we look at each other,

clutch the baby, know this is the end.

I flee the terrible suitors of my thoughts,

run through the mess the falling

has made of the run. I can’t say yes

to what they propose. My only power

is in saying no, no, no. Was that the MO

and more for the back forty,

my old lady?

from Poetry Northwest 10.2 Winter & Spring 2016More by Rebecca Hoogs from the library

by Rebecca Hoogs

When, in a sprawling subterranean housewares shop

of Rome, I asked the price of some wine glasses,

and the salesman told me and then told me

to veni qui, to come here, I went.

He showed me some other glasses.

Do you like these? he asked. I don’t speak

much Italian so said only, yes, I like,

crystale, he said, and pinged the glass

with a fingernail. Yes, I repeated, crystale.

And then he touched my arm and said veni qui,

veni qui, and so we went to another part

of the breakable underworld where real

about-to-be-married Italians were filling

their bridal registry and so like me did not yet

have all their words for negativity

and he stopped before another set of glasses

and said, you like? And again, yes, I liked.

And again he rang the tiny bell of what he was

trying to sell me. And then, arm touch, come here,

and then yes, I like. This went on for some time

until I’d liked it all. I liked and was like every glass

he held. All I was was touched. All I could say was yes

to everything but I bought just two small glasses

from which you and I have yet to drink.

from Poetry Northwest 07.2 Fall & Winter 2012-2013More by Rebecca Hoogs from the library

Category: Rebecca Hoogs

Letter to the Future from March 29, 2015

Come Here