The Change by Tony Hoagland
The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine. In the park the daffodils came up and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade. Sometimes I think that nothing really changes— The young girls show the latest crop of tummies, and the new president proves that he’s a dummy. […]
Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
There is no single particular noun for the way a friendship, stretched over time, grows thin, then one day snaps with a popping sound. No verb for accidentally breaking a thing while trying to get it open —a marriage, for example. No particular phrase for losing a book in the middle of reading it, and […]
Requests for Toy Piano by Tony Hoagland
Play the one about the family of the ducks where the ducks go down to the river and one of them thinks the water will be cold but then they jump in anyway and like it and splash around. No, I must play the one about the nervous man from Palestine in row 14 with […]
Reasons to Survive November by Tony Hoagland
November like a train wreck – as if a locomotive made of cold had hurtled out of Canada and crashed into a million trees, flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire. The sky is a thick, cold gauze – but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown, and the Jack Parsons show […]
Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet by Tony Hoagland
At this height, Kansas is just a concept, a checkerboard design of wheat and corn no larger than the foldout section of my neighbor’s travel magazine. At this stage of the journey I would estimate the distance between myself and my own feelings is roughly the same as the mileage from Seattle to New York, […]
Quiet by Tony Hoagland
Prolonged exposure to death Has made my friend quieter. Now his nose is less like a hatchet And more like a snuffler. Flames don’t erupt from his mouth anymore And life doesn’t crack his thermometer. Instead of overthrowing the government He reads fly-fishing catalogues And takes photographs of water. An aphorist would say The horns […]
Note to Reality by Tony Hoagland
Without even knowing it, I have believed in you for a long time. When I looked at my blood under a microscope I could see truth multiplying over and over. —Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma persuaded me but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass thrust up above […]
National Trust by Tony Harrison
National Trust by Tony Harrison Bottomless pits. There’s on in Castleton, and stout upholders of our law and order one day thought its depth worth wagering on and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb. Not even a good flogging made him holler! O gentlemen, […]
Memory As a Hearing Aid by Tony Hoagland
Somewhere, someone is asking a question, and I stand squinting at the classroom with one hand cupped behind my ear, trying to figure out where that voice is coming from. I might be already an old man, attempting to recall the night his hearing got misplaced, front-row-center at a battle of the bands, where a […]
Marked with D. by Tony Harrison
Marked with D. by Tony Harrison When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven not unlike those he fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven and radiant with the sight of his dead wife, light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, ‘not Florence and not […]
Lucky by Tony Hoagland
If you are lucky in this life, you will get to help your enemy the way I got to help my mother when she was weakened past the point of saying no. Into the big enamel tub half-filled with water which I had made just right, I lowered the childish skeleton she had become. Her […]
Long Distance II by Tony Harrison
Long Distance II by Tony Harrison Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass. You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone. He’d put you off an hour to […]
Long Distance I by Tony Harrison
Long Distance I by Tony Harrison Your bed’s got two wrong sides. You life’s all grouse. I let your phone-call take its dismal course: Ah can’t stand it no more, this empty house! Carrots choke us wi’out your mam’s white sauce! Them sweets you brought me, you can have ’em back. Ah’m diabetic now. Got […]
Jet by Tony Hoagland
Sometimes I wish I were still out on the back porch, drinking jet fuel with the boys, getting louder and louder as the empty cans drop out of our paws like booster rockets falling back to Earth and we soar up into the summer stars. Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead, bearing asteroids and […]
Tony Harrison – Tony Harrison
“author”: { “@type”: “Person”, “name”: “Tony Harrison” }, “publisher”: { “@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “Poetry Monster Encyclopedia”, “logo”: { “@type”: “ImageObject”, “url”: “https://www.best-poems.net/images/logo.png”, “width”: 233, “height”: 73 } } } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-23275927-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_setDomainName’, ‘.best-poems.net’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ […]
In Praise of Their Divorce by Tony Hoagland
And when I heard about the divorce of my friends, I couldn’t help but be proud of them, that man and that woman setting off in different directions, like pilgrims in a proverb —him to buy his very own toaster oven, her seeking a prescription for sleeping pills. Let us keep in mind the hidden […]
I Have News For You by Tony Hoagland
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 […]
Heredity by Tony Harrison
Heredity by Tony Harrison How you became a poet’s a mystery! Wherever did you get your talent from? I say: I had two uncles, Joe and Harry- one was a stammerer, the other dumb. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — […]
Grammar by Tony Hoagland
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend, smiles like a big cat and says that she’s a conjugated verb. She’s been doing the direct object with a second person pronoun named Phil, and when she walks into the room, everybody turns: some kind of light is coming from her head. Even the geraniums look […]
Don’t Tell Anyone by Tony Hoagland
We had been married for six or seven years when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me that she screams underwater when she swims— that, in fact, she has been screaming for years into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool where she does laps every other day. Buttering her toast, […]
Disappointment by Tony Hoagland
I was feeling pretty religious standing on the bridge in my winter coat looking down at the gray water: the sharp little waves dusted with snow, fish in their tin armor. That’s what I like about disappointment: the way it slows you down, when the querulous insistent chatter of desire goes dead calm and the […]
Coming and Going by Tony Hoagland
My marriage ended in an airport long ago. I was not wise enough to cry while looking for my car, walking through the underground garage; jets were roaring overhead, and if I had been wise I would have looked up at those heavy-bellied cylinders and seen the wheelchairs and the frightened dogs inside; the kidneys […]
Book Ends by Tony Harrison
Book Ends by Tony Harrison I Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead we chew it slowly that last apple pie. Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed. We never could talk much, and now don’t try. You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say, Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare… […]
Big Grab by Tony Hoagland
The corn chip engineer gets a bright idea, and talks to the corn chip executive and six months later at the factory they begin subtracting a few chips from every bag, but they still call it on the outside wrapper, The Big Grab, so the concept of Big is quietly modified to mean More or […]
Bible Study by Tony Hoagland
Who would have imagined that I would have to go a million miles away from the place where I was born to find people who would love me? And that I would go that distance and that I would find those people? In the dream JoAnne was showing me how much arm to amputate if […]
Beauty by Tony Hoagland
When the medication she was taking caused tiny vessels in her face to break, leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks, my sister said she knew she would never be beautiful again. After all those years of watching her reflection in the mirror, sucking in her stomach and standing straight, she said it […]
At the Galleria Shopping Mall by Tony Hoagland
Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear, there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs; one of them singing news about a far-off war, one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood. And here is my niece Lucinda, who is nine and a […]
America by Tony Hoagland
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials, And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think […]
A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant, driving over the hills from work. There are the dark parts on the road when you pass through clumps of wood and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean, but that doesn’t make the road an allegory. I should call Marie and apologize […]
To His Mistress In Absence by Torquato Tasso
FAR from thy dearest self, the scope Of all my aims, I waste in secret flames; And only live because I hope. O when will Fate restore The joys, in whose bright fire My expectation shall expire, That I may live because I hope no more! ————— The End And that’s the End of the […]
“What weeping, or what dewfall,” by Torquato Tasso
What weeping, or what dewfall, Whose then were those tears, Flung from night’s cloak, I saw, And the white face of the stars? Why was the white moon sowing A pure cloud’s crystal mass In the lap of fresh new grass? Why were the winds heard, blowing, Through the dark air, round and round, Till […]
“Once we were happy” by Torquato Tasso
Once we were happy, I Loving and beloved, You loved and loving, sweetly moved. Then you became the enemy Of love, and I to disdain Found youthful passion change. Disdain demands I speak, Disdain, that in my breast Keeps the shame of my neglected offering fresh: And from your laurel Tears the leaves, now dry, […]
“O you, far colder, whiter” by Torquato Tasso
O you, far colder, whiter Than she who makes less fair The stars with shining there: Her purest silver cannot dim Nor any cloud, or rain or wind, Your sweet brightness, lovely eyes. Would you but turn to me, with delight, I should be happy, and my life a dream. ————— The End And that’s […]
“Life of my life, you seem to me” by Torquato Tasso
Life of my life, you seem to me Like some pallid olive tree Or the faded rose I see: Nor do you lack beauty, But pleasing in every way to me, In shyness or in flattery, Whether you follow me or flee, Consume, destroy me softly. ————— The End And that’s the End of the […]
“Hedge, that divides the lovely” by Torquato Tasso
Hedge, that divides the lovely Garden, and myself from me, Never in you so fair a rose I see As she who is my lady, Loving, sweet and holy: Who as I stretch my hand to you Presses it, so softly, too. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 07 by Torquato Tasso
LXXXV “Or else my tender bosom opened wide, And heart though pierced with his cruel blade, The bloody weapon in my wounded side Might cure the wound which love before had made; Then should my soul in rest and quiet slide Down to the valleys of the Elysian shade, And my mishap the knight perchance […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
LXXI “O spotless virgin,” Honor thus began, “That my true lore observed firmly hast, When with thy foes thou didst in bondage won, Remember then I kept thee pure and chaste, At liberty now, where wouldest thou run, To lay that field of princely virtue waste, Or lost that jewel ladies hold so dear? Is […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 05 by Torquato Tasso
LVII He honored her, served her, and leave her gave, And willed her go whither and when she list, Her gold and jewels had he care to save, And them restored all, she nothing missed, She, that beheld this youth and person brave, When, by this deed, his noble mind she wist, Laid ope her […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
XXIX This youth was one of those, who late desired With that vain-glorious boaster to have fought, But Tancred chosen, he and all retired; Now when his slackness he awhile admired, And saw elsewhere employed was his thought, Nor that to just, though chosen, once he proffered, He boldly took that fit occasion offered. XXX […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 02 by Torquato Tasso
XV “Say that a knight, who holds in great disdain To be thus closed up in secret new, Will with his sword in open field maintain, If any dare deny his words for true, That no devotion, as they falsely feign, Hath moved the French these countries to subdue; But vile ambition, and pride’s hateful […]