It’s time for another entry in our digital broadside series recognizing poets under thirty years old via poems under thirty lines. This week Richie Hofman brings us the title poem from his upcoming collection.
Second Empire
The water, for once,
unmetaphysical. Stepping over
the stones, you pulling
your shirt over your shoulders.
The flesh-and-
blood that constitutes you
could have been anything and yet
appears before me
as your body. Wading out again,
I am a little white omnivore
in the black water,
inhaling avidly
the absence of shame.
We lie on our backs
with our underwear on.
The soul is an aristocrat.
It disdains the body,
staring through the water
at the suggestion of our human forms.
Richie Hofmann’s first collection of poems, Second Empire, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in November 2015. He is a doctoral student and Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.