Don Hogle
Somewhere in Georgia
We circled each other for months,
tethered in orbit by attraction
and mistrust.
But rotating in space gets boring;
I was grateful we eventually came
down to earth.
You sliced a Frisbee through fireflies
on the front lawn of campus;
I studied
your body’s topography,
mapping the seismic activity of
your muscles.
You feigned sleep on the floor of my apartment.
From inches away, I observed
your breathing.
I left toast crumbs on the butter dish.
My disregard for propriety seemed to
excite you.
You lobbed whole novels my way, challenging me
to dissect them. To your delight, I lay their bits
before you.
You waited until somewhere in Georgia,
after we’d pulled the darkness of the highway
around us,
to ask me if it were true
I wanted to be your lover. You must have
known I lied.
We drove on in silence, oncoming headlights
scrolling across our faces like credits at the end
of the film.
Belated Valentine for Alex
At the Pushkar Camel Fair, amidst the smell
of dung and cooking fires, the camels were tarted up
like stepsisters at the Prince’s Ball. Hennaed
designs covered their hairy chins, silver bells
tinkled in their ears. They looked at me imploringly
through eyelashes thick with kohl. At the end
of the road, a Ferris wheel strung with lights went
round, a generator thrumming in a truck.
One lone cart adorned with Shiva’s exploits sold
something fried, and a sadhu—covered in ash,
chanted on a swing in a cage, a few crumpled
rupees and a mango at his feet. What’s it like, Alex,
to be adored? Is it true, what Balzac may have said,
that in love there’s always one who suffers,
and the other one is bored? In the bath and shower
aisle at the grocery store, they’ve branded
the Stages of Infatuation—Caress, Lever, and Axe
—worship, negotiation, and the bloody end of it.
Don Hogle’s poetry has appeared in Apalachee Review, Atlanta Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chautauqua, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Penn Review among others. Awards include an Honorable Mention for the 2018 E. E. Cummings Prize from the New England Poetry Club. His debut chapbook, Madagascar, was published in 2020 by Sevens Kitchens Press. He lives in Manhattan. www.donhoglepoet.com
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