September 13, 2022

John Hodgen

QUIET QUIT

Most of us
at the end
will quiet quit
will recognize
body
as mystery
a history
book we must
return
a requirement
a requisite
each line on our face
or hand a pink slip
a dance stamp
ultraviolet
allowing us
to be returned
to re-admit
body as thesis
exegesis
op. cit.
loc. cit.
to wit
an extra Jesus
at the core of it
body a tool and die
shop breaking
bit by bit
a Morse code
telegraph
dot dot
dit dit
even our clothes
refusing to fit
like sitting on
Clint Eastwood’s lawn
telling everyone
to git
saying what soldiers say
when they get shot
I’m hit
I’m hit
when all we want
is to get lit
like a funeral pyre
a fiery pit
a piece of shit
like the game is over
like tag
you’re it
 

from Poets Respond
September 13, 2022

__________

John Hodgen: “Can’t hear that phrase without feeling as if we’re all taking another hit, one in a thousand pinpricks each day, not the ‘little death’ John Donne wrote about in describing sex, but more of a malaise, a sense that all of us, despite all that is partisan and which separates us, are united in this, sensing the end of things, society on the brink, democracy, and even the workplace, now a series of empty canyons with workers, spiritless, feeling alive in some other way, morphing into something else and yet dying a bit each day.”

Rattle Logo

December 22, 2019

John Hodgen

HEARING

We divorced during the impeachment proceedings,
each of us calling for points of order, grudgingly ceding
ground when we had to, glad to strike the last word,
or enter into the record some conspiracy theory we’d heard,
calling it all a sham, a scam, denying witnesses, crying no
to every allegation of tit for tat, or quid pro quo,
proposing subsidiary motions to postpone to a certain time,
or indefinitely, to amend, commit, or refer to a crime,
to raise a previous question, lay on the table, cite or attest,
to object to further consideration, make a final request
to extend the limits of debate, to uphold a vow, an oath,
to second that emotion, raise a question of privilege, both
of us appealing for a recess, a suspension of the rules,
both of us out of order, both of us fools.

from Poets Respond
December 22, 2019

__________

John Hodgen: “With pundits and commentators describing this impeachment vote as a signature day in our collective history, I think of that history as both macrocosm and microcosm, that for every weighty political moment for our leaders and representatives, there are millions of people going through their own history, living through their own landmark days, including those spent in civic halls testifying to oaths and vows.”

Rattle Logo