Picture if you will Tony Hoagland
and me, he in his Donkey Gospel
hat and me wearing my Hustle ring,
in his car patched with silver duct
tape and sagging passenger mirrors
discussing vehicles as metaphors
for systems, as waxen images of
transcendence,
while he recklessly
bends corners of potholed
Houston streets, clutching the
steering wheel so tightly
as if it were the future
of American poetry. This is where
it gets complicated and awkward.
Not complicated
as in father twists his fanny
pack as he leans forward to kiss your
forehead complicated, but just slightly
awkward because he says,
no dawg, you which
really isn’t the uncomfortable
part. It’s that we’ve lost
something
between us, mostly weight,
him getting sick and me getting
healthy. We have talked about “The
Change.” He has taken one
hand off the wheel
to gently tap my knee
and then brush up
those Van Gogh trees he
calls hair. The labyrinth
is someone’s home. All men are
part boogie. What
he tells me cannot fit in a poem,
his words no longer light enough
to lift out my chest.