The Marsh
What do I hope to learn from Lorine Niedecker? Duration, intensity. The making of a portraiture faithful to desire and knowledge's recesses. An economy that is strict but also generous. Her atmospheres, even in their gentleness, are ribbed with a hard edge. The poems exacting, pleasurable; they refuse me. Sound and image emerge diamond-like from the white fog of the page and recede again. She pulls a line apart and shows me its stepped tension, its slow dissipation. And also, of course, how to listen.
He told me he recognized our new life and I knew
I carried a tick with me all day
and did not know. he sent me word
across a lake covered in mist rising
and then forgot he had
he thought the word again
and again sent it
fashioned a boat-
shaped hole out of the same mist
curtains come together and
disappear their seam
the little woman on the stage of my heart cannot
find an exit in the velvet
I love to be picked up and then put down
put down and then picked up
I can be a doll, I can be the accent
thread pulled through your loom
if you are going to fix me
in place, let my place be your first
point of orientation
— tell me how you'd like me to fashion —
I want to know you as every pronoun, but I keep
my eyes for myself
does the stage of his heart have a little man —
does he turn his face — to the house or to the curtain?
we talk about how we need
a system for screening poison from our home
something stiffer than a talisman's
collective agency
which life, which arrow
I consign, I elect
I roll up my sleeve and see in the imprint
of the elastic cuff, a freckle walking
we have our four hands on the vane of the house
moving the weather
the mist closes, again more pliable
than velvet
the stage of my heart is an apse
and I empty to it
he calls through the velvet
checking in on the universe
now if only
he were calling
for me
In the early dark of morning
the birds made an eels' nest
with their voices, trills ribboning to
silver tails plashing in and out of
deep and deeper
liquid, the black air carrying
its frenzy to me wet and slickened
roiled I woke to the sound with
its glinting carom
I knew light
was still far off
Kelly Hoffer (@kellyrosehoffer) is a poet and book artist. Her debut collection of poems UNDERSHORE (2023) was selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen as the winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize. Her book manuscript Fire Series was a finalist for the 2021 National Poetry Series and the Georgia Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, American Chordata, TAGVVERK, and Chicago Review, among others. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Jacket2, Cultural Critique, Inscription, and The Henry James Review. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor of Poetry. Learn more at: https://www.kellyrosehoffer.com/
