Magda Andrews-Hoke
WAG
On my twenty-fifth birthday I saw a greyhound
in a little red jacket being walked by a woman
in a Scandinavian sweater. I said aloud,
“Is this what it’s like to grow older?” I can
make no head, no tail of it: the ship
I packed love away in, the one-way ticket I bought
it, the gallop-off whip I inflicted … why imply
in so many words my surely forever impeccable aloneness!
But I know I will dress in a little red jacket
my loss and walk him west till he becomes flesh.
Magda Andrews-Hoke lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works at the Kelly Writers House. She studied Linguistics and English at Yale University and was a 2019 recipient of the Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for poetry. Her poems can be found in Commonweal Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere.
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