Migration
By Tony Hoagland
This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.
I bet sometimes she doesn't know
what threshold she is waiting at --
the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.
But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,
the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grande Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness --
and hope moving from one location to another
like the holy ghost that it is.
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From Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch in today's Washington Post Book World. Hoagland, writes Hirsch, "has a smart and sassy way of thinking about America in his work. He is one of the few poets self-consciously trying to come to terms with -- to find a way to think about -- the apparent omnipotence and inescapability of the mass culture that surrounds us like a sea." Because of this, we're at a distance from genuine feeling: "Thus a lovely summer night becomes the 'Commercial for a Summer Night.'" A student tells him that "America is for him a maximum-security prison// Whose walls are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes/ Where you can't tell the show from the commercials," and he wonders "if this is a legitimate category of pain,/ or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade."
I'm in Pennsylvania, with plans to go to the Renaissance Fair (
Maximus!
Maximus!
Maximus!
Maximus!
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