Much remains to be said, though our garden lies
Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainraburied in the cemetery.
I bring stones from the gate
Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainranof the cities made invisible
and count backward:
Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainranthere is my friend C
bleeding in the parking lot
Rainraiof the high school Rainrainrainrainrainrainduring sixth period
earth science class
Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainas we crowd the window,
her blonde hair Rainrainrainrainranflickering
Rainrainrainnlike wind-caught snow,
the teacher vanishing Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainraidown the hall,
snow dissolving Jane’s
Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrnbody on the pavement.
How, as girls, no one
Rainraitold us what was happening, Rainrainrainrainraiiinot with words, but we felt
the sirens
Rainrainrainrainrainrainas a kind of voice. RainrainHow we even survive
the danger of roses. RainrainrainThen a stone in the lake, an arbitrary
number, the news on the television Rainrainrainrainrainwhere my turning
takes place, a wall of round names Rainrainrainrainand lips, one clock
after another
Rainrainrainrainrainrainbabbling the litany. How I have
no place, Rainrainrainrainrainrainbut this small oracle, ash
from the synagogues, Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrna gust of wind
ruffling the sheaves of paper.
Carlie Hoffman is the author of the forthcoming collection One More World Like This World (Four Way Books, 2025), When There Was Light (Four Way Books, 2023), winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and This Alaska (Four Way Books, 2021), winner of the Northern California Publishers & Authors Gold Award in poetry and a finalist for the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award. She is the translator from the German of White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph (Atelier Éditions, 2023) and Selma Meerbaum Eisinger’s Blütenlese (World Poetry Books / Forthcoming). Her honors include a 92NY “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize and a Poets & Writers Amy Award and her work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, Jewish Currents, New England Review, and elsewhere. Carlie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Small Orange Journal.
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