Bill Hoagland received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts in 1979 and then went on to teach an inordinate amount of composition in small colleges in Montana and Wyoming. In 2011 he met a lovely Irish woman, married her in 2012, retired in 2013, and sold his house and moved to Ireland where he seems to be living the dream life. Although he has published more than a hundred poems in journals, literary magazines, and anthologies, and won several literary awards, he has never published a full length book. Over the last nine months, however, he has been revising older poems, writing new ones, and organizing these into books which are now in search of publishers who would recognize his ability to help readers fulfill their potential as sentient beings.

Bill Hoagland

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Guest in the Asylum

Two moans. A yelp. Long eyes.
Uselessness and waste,
pained shuffling down
the hall of quicksand.
An open mouth, a tongue
without strength, infected.

Take small, slow steps
as though the floor may go,
the abyss opening, open.
You too will be swallowed whole,
touching walls for their soft spots,
unless you avert your eyes.