Homecoming

Homecoming

Laura Reece Hogan

You settle me in a place I keep forgetting,
vivid yet liminal under the ash-purpled sky.
You know the plans, but I always mistake

the escape. I open the windows
and let in the smoke.
You lift the veil. The park is no longer a park. What was

serene green withers to waste, fades
to unkind stubble. The city installed shiny water meters
to measure each drip of usage. Now lack

slaughters the Asian pear tree, crumpling limb
by limb, stunted fruit
cracked by thirst. The garden is no longer

a garden, under the black sunset bucking the pyroclouds.
A squirrel is in paroxysms on the concrete, victim
of somebody’s poison. The roses a crepe memory.

Inside, you
are turning me, turning me from exile
to home. Inside (you

within me, where the watered tendrils
twist tender), inside
tell me—are you dis-

lodging me
new?

---

Laura Reece Hogan
Poet

Laura Reece Hogan is the author, most-recently, of Butterfly Nebula (2023, Backwaters/Nebraska) and Litany of Flights (2020, Paraclete). She lives in Los Angeles.

Photography by Ellie Burgin