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Death
A Tribute To Tony Hoagland
By turns funny and sad, caustic and poignant, Tony’s poetry first appeared in The Sun in May of 2000, and he was a regular contributor for the past ten years. Though he frequently used humor to make his writing more accessible, he could still catch the reader off guard with a sudden shift in tone, ending a poem in a very different mood than where it began.
March 2019
Leaving Austin
It seems she was surprised to hear from me. “Marion,” she wrote back a week later, “I kinda liked you when I met you, and then I learned to love you, but now you’re just the skank that fucked my man when I was struggling to make a family.”
January 2019
Hello, Goodbye
You want to write back, He died. You want your hurt to be the world’s hurt. This pain is what was born tonight. It’s a palpable, physical thing, an object of infinite dimension that can be looked at from many angles, held closely or at a distance, and always there is some new aspect of the sorrow.
January 2019
Selected Poems
— from “In The Beautiful Rain” | Hearing that old phrase “a good death,” / which I still don’t exactly understand, / I’ve decided I’ve already / had so many, I don’t need another.
December 2018That Year
That year, all our fathers had died or were getting ready to, and they were not taking it well, that is for sure.
October 2018
The Wandering Jew
There was once a Jew who had been wandering for hundreds of years in search of his death.
October 2018Clickbait Elegy
Brother Sends Mysterious Text (And Woman’s Life Changes Overnight) / How To Drink Your Way Through The First Few Days Of Mourning / Looking For Last-Minute Airfare Deals From Las Vegas To Cleveland?
October 2018Maintenance Boy
I worked weekend nights and a couple of afternoon shifts during the week. Sometimes I requested more hours just to get away from home. Being away meant I didn’t have to deal with the sadness that lingered in our house.
September 2018
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