Two Poems by Carlie Hoffman

On a Prewar Piano

From the future, I watch the lights
flickering in the windows of a boat
shivering in the icy weather of
another planet's sea, wait silently
for its docking, for people
with my bone structure to step over
the threshold where I can see
their glowing ankles and briefcases
filled with news of the world. The world
has so many rooms it's impossible
to pinpoint where mine begins.
During the war, my grandfather
emerges from a ship and traces
his new alphabet across the dirt.
The ship's hull balloons
into an elephant-rubbed sky.
Soon the sky
fills with people. My grandfather
turns the dial of his American radio
to the prayer of a wordless song.

After the Farm was Sold to FedEx

My grandfather is still alive
and living upstate, smoking
on the porch with one leg up.
He's watching a cloud of boys
toss a baseball back and forth
with such grace and economy—
sneakers kicking dust
into apricot mouths,
sweating backs colorful and clawed.
He is watching them move
toward their most
primitive selves: flaming horses
in the old barbed-wire farm.
So much of what's been lost belongs
to the ground—newspaper headlines,
the family name—all drunk
and dreamed away. Soon,
every voice around
wills the present tense.
Like their country's flag,
all the mothers wave dish towels
out the kitchen windows
for their sons to come inside
and wash their hands.
Wait, he says, and the wind
catches. The boys drop their mitts
offhandedly on the grass.

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Carlie Hoffman's debut poetry collection is This Alaska (Four Way Books, 2021). Her second collection is forthcoming with Four Way Books in 2023. A poet and translator, her honors include a 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize and a Poets & Writers Amy Award. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Purchase College, SUNY and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Small Orange Journal.