Tony Hoagland

Grammar

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

Jet

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

Why the Young Men Are So Ugly

They have little tractors in their blood And all day the tractors climb up and down Inside their arms and legs, their Collarbones and heads. That is why they yell and scream and slam

Lucky

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

Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet

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