Jeannie Hoag

Warm Brown Rice

You will not advance unless

you respond appropriately

A row of grandmas

What is this passion

I want you to raise the people

In The Substantive Way We Practiced This Morning

We’re hiding the fact that we’re human,

so injured when others rest on us, too heavy

for our bodies.  We’re human, two skinny people

too heavy for our bodies

to keep all components in one box.

Two skinny people, we have always

tried to keep all components in one box.

We carry it from unit to unit.

We carry a tired buffalo, the house of the soul.

You have always tried to stand

as close as possible.

Less & less, you’re standing close

as you reach your destination.

Less & less the buffalo keeps us alive.

You stand as close as possible to theologians

when you reach your destination.

Is your love yielding to theologians?

Does your love take in a stranger’s heart?

In this new unit I miss you,

the house of my soul too small

for a stranger.  Theologians wave

to the girl on the porch of the house.

It is too small for them to come in.

In this new unit I miss you.

The theologians wave to the girl less & less.

You Had And Orgy And Didn't Invite Me

The official term is self-incompatibility:

the inability to mate with 

or understand your own longings.

A small thread in the digestive tract

causes unrivaled damage as it unravels.

Not that I would want to,

but I can blow whistles too, you know.

The whistle-blowing champion of 1989

wasn’t me, but I was good friends

with someone who claimed to know him.

For the perpetually uninvolved,

paddleball can be a fulfilling pastime

and it cannot be denied

that eventually the elastic 

will reach its limits of expansion and return

the ball benevolently to the paddle.