Black SUV: (after Vallejo)

Abstract

Black SUV(after Vallejo) Tony Hoagland (bio) I will die in Houston on a Monday afternoon squashed by a giant black SUV driven by some lawyer who never really needed four-wheel drive, yapping on his cell phone when he cuts me off. With my blood fizzing out into the street like so much sugary grape soda I will listen to him trying to reach his lawyer before the cops arrive, with their awkward questions about lines of sight and liability— but at least I will be allowed to look up at the sky while I expire, through the twisting limbs of 100-year old oaks like a jigsaw puzzle that finally makes sense as an example of how hard life tries to extend itself. I will die on a Monday, in Houston, in the afternoon, and I will not be happy at the indignity of being slain by a person who thinks of Bill O’Reilly as a deep thinker, a man who has never even looked for, much less found, a clitoris but I was told some time ago that life might halt in this kind of unlikely intersection, that death might be the ultimate awkward social moment. I suppose I can predict, when so much else frightens me, that this too, will frighten me. I suppose I will recoil from this new experience about which so many rumors have been spread, but I hope I will be able to coax myself forward into something more comfortable than Monday afternoon, and dying, and Texas, —though, it should be said, there are worse places, too. [End Page 99] Tony Hoagland Tony Hoagland teaches in graduate courses in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. His books of poems and essays include Donkey Gospel (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; What Narcissism Means to Me (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2003), poems; Hard Rain (Venice: Hollyridge Press, 2005), winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; and Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2006). Copyright © 2009 Charles H. Rowell