By Nick Hoffman
᠅
The fittingness of it:
old language, old book
and always found
on calf skin, pulled and dried
With that name, if anything bloody
ever happened to you,
it would mean something
In the bathtub, they rub off easy
your wick-cut letters
and I’ve cleaned for now
those etymologies and other daily dusts
The shame of admitting it:
I forget my own mother sometimes
how she made me and thought, “yes,
this one will be a gift-giver
and bring storms to a whimper”
Eyes closed and my palms upward
I wonder fully, and I pray halfway
thinking of the feast days
falling between March and harvest
But your name is the spring,
and the spring is a numb chariot,
bursting forth in its senseless living
Its wheels scatter a planet
of supplicant flies, thin hands
fingerless and busy, humming
vespers at the watermelon rinds
And I love to watch you
and the seeds swell over days
Ticks stuck in the pink flesh
Nicholas Hoffman is a medievalist and writer from the Hudson Valley. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his partner and any number of pet rats. His work has appeared in Chronogram, Night Picnic, and Eunoia Review.
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