Hofmann - Second Empire

2015 by Richie Hofmann All rights reserved Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Alice James Books 114 Prescott Street Farmington, ME 04938 www.alicejamesbooks.org eISBN: 978-1-938584-30-5 Cover Art: Fernando Vicente - Serie Atlas - Grito, www.fernandovicente.es NOTE TO THE READER Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size: You wait out this tempest in the Windsor chair, away from the windows. Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank the editors of the following publications: 32 Poems: Bright Walls (as Untitled), Fly The Adroit Journal: Midwinter The Common: The Harbor Cosmonauts Avenue: The Gates Denver Quarterly: Antique Book (as Song) Devils Lake: Scene from CaravaggioFIELD: Imperium, Abendlied Gulf Coast: Description, The Surround, Gatekeeper Harvard Divinity Bulletin: Capriccio Indiana Review: Sea Interlude: Storm Lambda Literary Review: At the Palais Garnier, Egyptian Cotton Maggy: Purple The Massachusetts Review: Amor Vincit Omnia The Missouri Review: Sea Interlude: Dawn, Sea Interlude: Passacaglia, Sea Interlude: Moonlight The New Criterion: Illustration from Parsifal, Mirror New England Review: Night Ferry The New Republic: October 29, 2012 The New Yorker: Idyll The Paris-American: Allegory Ploughshares: After Poetry: Fresco, Keys to the City, Imperial City Poetry Northwest: The Ships Shenandoah: Braying The Southern Review: Egyptian Bowl with Figs Southwest Review: First Night in Stonington Tin House Online: Second Empire The Yale Review: Three Cranes Fresco was reprinted in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Braying was reprinted on Poetry Daily. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank the editors of the following publications: 32 Poems: Bright Walls (as Untitled), Fly The Adroit Journal: Midwinter The Common: The Harbor Cosmonauts Avenue: The Gates Denver Quarterly: Antique Book (as Song) Devils Lake: Scene from CaravaggioFIELD: Imperium, Abendlied Gulf Coast: Description, The Surround, Gatekeeper Harvard Divinity Bulletin: Capriccio Indiana Review: Sea Interlude: Storm Lambda Literary Review: At the Palais Garnier, Egyptian Cotton Maggy: Purple The Massachusetts Review: Amor Vincit Omnia The Missouri Review: Sea Interlude: Dawn, Sea Interlude: Passacaglia, Sea Interlude: Moonlight The New Criterion: Illustration from Parsifal, Mirror New England Review: Night Ferry The New Republic: October 29, 2012 The New Yorker: Idyll The Paris-American: Allegory Ploughshares: After Poetry: Fresco, Keys to the City, Imperial City Poetry Northwest: The Ships Shenandoah: Braying The Southern Review: Egyptian Bowl with Figs Southwest Review: First Night in Stonington Tin House Online: Second Empire The Yale Review: Three Cranes Fresco was reprinted in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Braying was reprinted on Poetry Daily.

Midwinter was reprinted on Best of the Net 2014. After was reprinted in Best New Poets 2014, edited by Dorianne Laux and Jazzy Danziger. For generous financial and artistic support, the author thanks the Poetry Foundation, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, the James Merrill House, the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College, West Chester University Poetry Conference, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. For encouragement, thank you to Natasha Trethewey, Mary Jo Salter, Emily Leithauser, Jacques J. Rancourt, Tarfia Faizullah, Lisa Hiton, and especially Kara van de Graaf. Thank you, Ryan Hagerty.

Thank you, family. This book is for Ryan. SEA INTERLUDE: DAWN Smoke-green mist leans into the rocks, where fishermen whistle and mend their nets, practicing rituals of brotherhood before the luster of sky and sun, which flashes against the pale horizon with the oily turbulence of a swarm of herring. Above, the familiar gulls shriek the news of the world. The ocean gurgles a dead language. Standing at the waters edge, I watch myself loosen into a brief, exquisite blur, like Antinos, nearly naked in the cold, in the morning gone adrift, turning away from love toward what he knows, even then, is loss. IDYLL Cicadas bury themselves in small mouths of the trees hollow, lie against the bark-tongues like amulets, though I am praying I might shake off this skin and be raised from the ground again.

I have nothing to confess. I dont yet know that I possess a body built for love. When the wind grazes its way toward something colder, you too will be changed. One life abrades another, rough cloth, expostulation. When I open my mouth, I am like an insect undressing itself. THREE CRANES Wading low through marsh and grass, quick and cautious, the crane, too, knows this: there is a freedom in submitting to another.

Cranes mate for life. With necks outstretched, they take flight, a double arrows stab of silver, released and then gone. I have searched for nourishment in you, like a long, black beak in the earth. How was I to know what I would find there? Every night, we shrieked our presence to each other, desire or grief lacquering us onto our lives like birds on a paneled screen.