BANG!
BANG!
BANG! authors are showcased individually here online. Each author installment is made up of three pieces in any combination: poetry shorts (20 lines or less) or fiction or nonfiction (500 words each or less) for a month or more. All work on must be previously unpublished. Submission period runs all year round. BANG! pieces are not published in The New Guard. Work should be very short: flash-short. Pieces on BANG! are meant to serve as a kind of calling card for the author. $22 submission fee. Don Hogle is a BANG! Selected Writer. :: Our next installment will be posted on March 4, 2024. ::
To date, Don Hogle has published one hundred poems in sixty journals including Atlanta Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chautauqua, Cider Press Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Naugatuck River Review and Penn Review. He won First Prize in the 2023 Open Poetry Competition of the National Association of Writers and Groups (U.K.) His debut full-length collection, Huddled in the Night Sky, is coming this fall (Poets Wear Prada.) A chapbook, Madagascar, was published in 2020 (Sevens Kitchens Press.) He lives happily in Manhattan. www.donhoglepoet.com
Don Hogle.
poems by don hogle
My Affair with Elvis
I was a Backstage Johnny who knew the gig—
show up every night, smile, and soon enough
you’re in. I saw immediately he needed to feel
I not only wanted him, but had to have him.
When we were alone, it was simple—Quaalude,
vodka, some honky-tonk blues, and he was movin’,
a hunka burnin’ junk watching me watching him.
He curled his lip in that come-on way that says,
Why don’t you come over and get it? So I did.
Before we blacked out, he curled up next to me
smelling like stardust, make-up, and Ring Dings.
His eyes were far away, but I knew what to sing:
in a voice dripping Tupelo honey I purred in his ear—
Baby, you the King.
Walking Home Buzzed
Larry, Paul, and I drank a glass of port after the three
or four rounds of Malbec in which we drowned
our Swedish meatballs at Scandinavia House.
The night was chilly but not unpleasant, so I decided
to walk. At 21st and Park, Bravo Pizza was lit up
like a beacon. Inside, there was an air of men taking care
of business—the oven boys twirled pies and snapped
the lids on tubs of mozzarella; I stood at the counter,
eating a slice with a clutch of other guys.
Decades before, too broke after a night at the bars
to take the subway home, I walked up Second Avenue
to 81st Street despite summer’s swelter. My t-shirt dangled
in my hand, sweat pooled in the small of my back,
my muscles pulsed; I dared anyone passing to want me.
Enantiodromia
Even as we kiss, and I cling
to the silvery flesh of your neck,
a carnivorous starfish;
even in the thick of it, your eyes
wide as traffic lights, Olympian
limbs testing my strength;
even as we rest, and you fold over
onto me like part of myself, counting
the beats you say pound in my chest;
even then, I hear the click of the door
close behind you one last time,
as it will one day; see myself
catch your scent
on the collar of a stranger
in a crowded train; watch
your face—a glint I’d seen
in dark water—fade and blur
back into the depths.
Poems © Don Hogle, 2024. All rights reserved by the author.
Previous authors appearing on BANG!: Patricia Smith, Haley Hach, Stephanie Cotsirilos, Scott McDaniel, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Edward L. Alban, Pete Follansbee, Jose Padua, Jillian Brenner, Susanna Baird, John Sibley Williams, Alexandra Oliver, Kerri Quinn, Mike Heppner, Marc Mewshaw, Dan Reilly, Joanie HF Zosike, Patrina Corsetti, Laura Apol, Lola Rainey, Timothy Dyke, Michael Miller, Marcia Popp, Doley Henderson, Jeff Hill, Lori Powell, Colleen Rose Sullivan, Quenton Baker, Michelle Bitting, Pam Munter, Dan Ritter, Anne Riesenberg, Ioanna Carlsen, Sarah T. Jewell, Alyson Gold Weinberg, Courtney Campbell, Joshua Graber, Charles Wyatt, Ingrid Norton, Julio Duggan, V. Hansmann, Margo Orlando Littell, Scarlett S. Diaz, Erica Vega, Ronald Okuaki Lieber, Elena Tomorowitz. Amy M. Alvarez, Jonathan Segol, Lissa Kiernan, Roger Bonair-Agard, James Kimbrell, Bridget Boland, E.G. Cunningham, Melissa Goode, Mark Wagstaff, Carla Stern, Sarah Glass, Jennifer Amell, Zakia R. Khwaja, Julie Poitras Santos, Lyall Harris, Claudia Manley of the Shake n’ Make Collective and Amy Nash.