Grief Hot Dog by Gabrielle Grace Hogan
Associate poetry editor Hannah Cajandig-Taylor on today’s bonus poem: Gabrielle Grace Hogan's delightful poem takes you on a wild ride, full of unexpected tenderness and vulnerability. Her voice shines here, with surprising imagery that echoes of love, loss, and longing. "Grief Hot Dog" has been in the back of my mind for weeks, and I have a feeling it will stay there for a long time. This piece is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
grief hot dog
i recognize faces are made of multiple parts.
i’m bored again. i look out the ceiling-to-floor windows
in my third-story classroom & think “how arrogant to be as tall
as trees.” we are not supposed to be this tall, least of all me,
who still uses tiptoes to write on the chalkboard. i put my height
in an envelope & lick it shut & mail it far away, to sweden or
the moon or some shit. maybe for ten easy payments of $9.99,
i can buy a new bod, stilt-length legs, giraffe-necked, flat-tummied
most preferably. in a perfect world, i don’t open-mouth sob
every time i see a koala, & i always go on vacation, especially
but not only when things get hard. i imagine every voicemail i leave
with lo-fi hip-hop beats behind it. if i have to be immortalized, i guess
this is the way to do it. it’d be cool to be just a voice, to exist only
when sitting on an ear, & when not sitting there, you go away, take a rest,
until someone wants to exist you again. then again, i am easily annoyed
by my own voice, so never mind. i want to fuck most of my friends’ girlfriends,
& by that i mean it takes one wrong look at me for me to deify a pair of breasts,
maybe just because mine are so small & masculine. if i had a penis
i’d be too scared to fellate myself so what would the point even be?
if i had a face, which i can’t prove that i do, i’d want it to be a pretty one.
not too pretty, but enough that i am allowed to keep it. i promise i’m not
being purposely obtuse. i’m not trying to sound stupid. i know things.
i know a lot of things. ask me almost anything. please, ask me something
Gabrielle Grace Hogan is a poet from St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently pursuing her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin as part of the New Writers Project. Her work has been published by the Academy of American Poets, Ghost City Review, Sonora Review, Best Buds! Collective, and more. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology You Flower / You Feast, an anthology of poetry and prose inspired by Harry Styles. Her social media and also poems can be found on her website gabriellegracehogan.com.
