Carlie Hoffman
Beyond the Field
I stood in the center
while the blizzard
went on and on. A snowshoe hare
curled near a perimeter of pine
like a closed white hand
and I knew that soon this snow
would erase me. Impermanence
is the first way of knowing the world, the second
a love of it regardless. Beyond the field
there are hills, though it was too
dark to see. There is a pond
where a tern tests the quickness
of water’s weight to anchor him.
The dead press the old light of their fingers
along the land-tract of our skin.
They tell us it is terrible
the way we brighten as we move on.
Carlie Hoffman is a recipient of the 2016 Discovery Poetry Prize. A finalist for the 2017 Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize, her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes and appear or are forthcoming in places like Bennington Review, Boston Review, Narrative, Nashville Review and elsewhere. She is from New Jersey. Visit her here: https://www.carliehoffman.com/
Return to September 2017 Edition
I stood in the center
while the blizzard
went on and on. A snowshoe hare
curled near a perimeter of pine
like a closed white hand
and I knew that soon this snow
would erase me. Impermanence
is the first way of knowing the world, the second
a love of it regardless. Beyond the field
there are hills, though it was too
dark to see. There is a pond
where a tern tests the quickness
of water’s weight to anchor him.
The dead press the old light of their fingers
along the land-tract of our skin.
They tell us it is terrible
the way we brighten as we move on.
Carlie Hoffman is a recipient of the 2016 Discovery Poetry Prize. A finalist for the 2017 Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize, her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes and appear or are forthcoming in places like Bennington Review, Boston Review, Narrative, Nashville Review and elsewhere. She is from New Jersey. Visit her here: https://www.carliehoffman.com/
Return to September 2017 Edition