February, worst month, blooms a flu beneath
your skull. You lie still on the mattress
and count your breath. Rain. Your body a wound
stuffed with sound. The person you love
has left: what you know of their voice:
a shock collar. As a child, zipped in a bright
yellow coat like a jessamine,
for stretches of winter, you lay still like this
on a bench at recess, the airwaves swelling
in your lungs, terrified
to be approached by the other children,
a rubber ball, or rope, ashamed you couldn’t rise
until the whistle. You hear
the rain, bare, an abbreviation,
each drop on the roof like a tooth
capped with blood. On the line a voice
is a field of jessamine, even when
all February hours are taken, you believe
it is a field of jessamine
for no other reason
but your life.
Carlie Hoffman is the recipient of a 92Y/Discovery Poetry Prize, an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and was listed as one of Narrative Magazine‘s 30 below 30 poets. She was awarded second place for poetry for the Writer’s Digest Annual competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, North American Review, TriQuarterly, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Ninth Letter, WomenArts Quarterly Journal and elsewhere.