KELLY HOFFER

 

Machine

 

the fabric of the world or universe and I mean
to hold it lightly, my fingers extending within the
bud to pull out an aphid small enough not to eat
truly truly a lick of sustenance from the dust and my
machine is supple and I will hold
it as I mean the part of a flail that strikes the grain, a protein
taken in threshing. the sea fabric meets the sky fabric
a threaded graft, the warmth reaching the depth of earth
that may be thrown up at once with a spade which is to say a spit
of land.
                you lie in the garden.
I watch your beard hairs grow to match
the chrysanthemum. as they ignite in the shine
off the glass of the water, the day becomes
too dazzling for mirrors. a ray
splits and I catch it a stripe, a king,
a chopped straw. my unfurling is
a luxurious arrangement. I let the pink russet and ripen. when I say, finish
I mean to come, to end, to give completeness or perfection.
the light swallowing a small piece
of gold or silver leaf.

Lush/Brink

 

I go to bed to see the light drop, bloom
behind my me—the eyelid films—then cease
in leaves. Watch petals pinking woolen from a loom,
we touch the brimming texture, feeling crease
release to spring, to rays. A purpling croons
below the sheet, a dewy-eyed increase—
a shine in two, outbreaking, wreathes the room.

You wear a crown of little doves, creased
to thorny beaks, I stuff your mouth, gray plume
pillows and floats    over. As if to lease
a coin, in debt from us to us, love fumes
and makes it soon (too moon, too soft) a feast
of glowing discs upon my teeth, and resumes—
I am in pleasure, touching and     released.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelly Hoffer is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was recently a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.  Her poems have appeared in BathHouse Journal and Radar Poetry. She currently lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is a PhD student in English at Cornell University.

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