Wasteful Gesture Only Not

By Tony Hoagland b. 1953 Tony Hoagland

Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills.

She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass

marks off the place where the memories are kept,

like a library book named Dorothy.

Some of the chapters might be: Dorothy:

Better Bird-Watcher Than Cook;

Dorothy, Wife and Atheist;

Passionate Recycler Dorothy, Here Lies But Not.

In the summer hills, where the tall tough grass

reminds you of persistence

and the endless wind

reminds you of indifference,

Ruth brings batches of white roses,

extravagant gesture not entirely wasteful

because as soon as she is gone she knows

the deer come out of the woods to eat them.

What was made for the eye

goes into the mouth,

thinks Ruth to herself as she drives away,

and in bed when she tries to remember her mother,

she drifts instead to the roses,

and when she thinks about the roses she

sees instead the deer chewing them—

pale petals of the roses in the dark

warm bellies of the sleeping deer—

that’s what going to sleep is like.

Tony Hoagland, “Wasteful Gesture Only Not” from What Narcissism Means to Me. Copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: What Narcissism Means to Me (2003)

Biography

Tony Hoagland was born in 1953 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He earned a BA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Hoagland’s poetry is known for its acerbic, witty take on contemporary life and “straight talk,” in the words of New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner. Garner continued: “At his frequent best… Mr. Hoagland is demonically in touch with the American demotic[.]’” Hoagland’s books of . . .

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