Poetry

Mistaken Identity by Tony Hoagland I thought I saw my mother in the lesbian bar with a salt gray crew cut, a nose stud and a tattoo of a parrot on her arm. She was sitting at a corner table, leaning forward to ignite, on someone’s match, one of those low-tar things she used to smoke, and she looked happy to be alive again after her long marriage to other people’s needs, her twenty-year stint as Sisyphus, struggling to push a blue Ford station wagon full of screaming kids up a mountainside of groceries. My friend Debra had brought … Read more