Afterwards everything whitened
like paper or breath—
The room was suddenly anchored to itself,
the chains stopped groaning.
I knew I could not leave with you.
The sea outside was like the sea
on the map. A sea-god was blowing
into a crosshatched arc of sails.
Richie Hofmann is the recipient of a 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares, among other journals.
JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN
What do I know / about us? One of us / was called Velvel, / little wolf. One of us / raised horses. Someone / was in grain. Six sisters / threw potatoes across / a river in Pennsylvania. / Once at a fair, I met / a horse performing / simple equations / with large dice. / Sure, it was a trick, / but being charmed / costs so little.
G. C. WALDREP
I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the natural, a complicity epic. / The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear— / Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage, / a friction of consequence.
CAROLINE M. MAR
That's a reconciliation that I'm often grappling with, which is about positionality. What am I responsible for? What's coming up for me; who am I in all of this? How can I be my authentic self and also how do I maybe take some responsibility?
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.