Carlie Hoffman

Carlie Hoffman is the author This Alaska (Four Way Books, 2021). Her second collection is also forthcoming with Four Way Books in 2023. A poet and translator, her honors include a 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize and a Poet's & Writers Amy Award. Carlie is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Small Orange Journal and is an Instructor of Creative Writing at Purchase College, SUNY.

Summer Brings No Cash I Quit

The suburban town off the highway I quit

the house ragging into oblivion the hostess stand I quit

I drop off menus one last time am a handful

of quits in the park I read the newspapers all about cold I quit

cold I,

a consequence I run out of. I run out of clean underwear

clean hair rain comes I slam the door turn back. I quit

Shabbos quit Evelyn cutting

pictures wedding gown purple flower butchered

magazines pouring out: walls drawers laundry boiled potatoes chicken broth

I quit the bride—mouthed communal

prayer

my beheaded tongue Hebrew tongue Russian tongue I comprehend nothing know

nothing summer fevers the trees

the anxious fish no God is coming to quit.

Late Show

Summer where the sun steams

your cotton dress

as you sit in lemon grass

sucking ice cubes and sweating

behind the house where mosquitoes

raid your skin. You have

sweet blood, your mother says

pinning bed sheets to the brittle

clothesline, which startles

the bird-flecked trees

because she is more obsidian,

more a person you try jumping in

the way you would a glassy stream,

only to find it frozen. All summer

air humid and thick as syrup,

the house empty, wooden clips

cradling the pillowcases.

You will spend your life

going home, the past a steamed-

over kettle. All summer

the white oaks outgrow the yard's

framework like a human

reflected in a shining.