Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four poetry collections: Exploding Head (forthcoming 2024), Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer. Hoffman is a former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and Director’s Guest at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Her poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Lake Effect, Blackbird, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.
A LIST OF POSSIBLE DROWNINGS
As a child, I tested if it’s possible to drown
in a tablespoon of water, holding the spoon
over my mouth and nose. My mother went under
off the coast of Santa Catalina Island. The giant
Catalina goldfish stared like sinking buoys, useless.
Luckily resurfaced by her then boyfriend’s
outstretched arm, or she wouldn’t have
years later sewn the water safety badge
on my Girl Scout sash. I wouldn’t have been born
to turn the drowning bugs over in the creek
with my stick or grab my now husband
by the shoulder, saving him from plunging
to the river stabbed with fish like scissor
blades. Today I learned there is a river
in the sky. Invisible until the day it bursts
on us like a tunnel aquarium. Storms
are getting stronger and the floating rivers
more leaden. They say it’s what will kill us
in the end. The spoon pressed so hard
it formed a suction. I smelled
the stinging tang of metal. That day I learned
my mother wouldn’t rip the spoon from my face,
that it was better to understand then
what could kill me than to later
be surprised. I went to meetings with the splash
of water embroidered on my chest, though
what I’d earned was not the lesson of water
but something else. That smell we think is metal
is actually the reaction the metal has with
our bodies. It is the smell of decomposing
iron atoms, of how our touching the world
kills the world, bit by bit. So when death comes
like a river of shimmering blue threads
to tie us off at the throat, it will come familiar
as the scent of our own blood.
THE FOX OF MY IMAGINATION
One summer, we followed the backyard creek
to see how far it went. Through concrete tunnels
my sister and I howled, jumping back and forth
across the glittering thread. We saw
the backs of houses, the lawn chairs and rusted
swings of other possible lives. The minnows
were the same at every turn, dark
disembodied thumbs. We ended at the reservoir
with the carousel of wooden horses bobbing
like creatures of the sea. Deep in the forest,
the fox still roams. He pauses mid-hunt
to lick the paw that never healed. I grew too old
to finish his story. Eventually, I peeled my reflection
from the surface of the creek and took it with me.
My sister rode a real horse, bought a farm,
settled in a life down south. I built
a family of my own, with a river of asphalt
out back. At our parents’ home, the creek
gets angry when it rains, snatching
mud from under the roots of the forest. A tree
collapses on the neighbor’s house. By morning,
the creek has churned a mosaic of shattered
beer bottles along its shores. My mother, in the window,
sees it signaling in the sunlight like a morse
code from the many years she watched
her daughters playing in the creek, all rainboots
and buckets. She grows old. Sometimes, she hears
the fox scream through the night. The fox
of my imagination lives forever. His den is never
washed away. His eats shards of glass. I haven’t
forgotten. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I pull
my reflection from the drawer like a dark gathering of silk,
find my childhood face woven into the fabric,
let it spill over my hands like water, like home.
SAVIOR
I’m on this boardwalk over the lake, alone
except for the party boat passing
beneath the bridge blasting music, men
waving. I don’t wave back. It’s getting
dark. A pair of lights are following
behind me like a silent car. I have this fantasy
a kitten wobbles out of the forest
to my feet and I have to cradle it
wriggling in my shirt the two miles
home. Instead, I walk through this soft
pelting rain of winged insects. Keep my
mouth closed. When I pass a cornfield,
I think I could be dragged into the corn
field. I hear a rustling either a squirrel or hands
about to seize me by the ankles. The science
of how many spiders you swallow in your sleep
is flawed. It’s more likely I’ll carry home
this six-legged fairy clinging to my collar,
her glass wings clanging at a frequency
too high for human ears. There’s
something called the windshield effect,
which means there aren’t as many
dead bugs splattered on your wind-
shield anymore. And all across America,
the lakes are drying up. Dinosaur tracks
were revealed with claw marks still intact. A ship
dating back to WWII. Perhaps this monsoon
of pale green bugs is a blessing at my cheek.
I wouldn’t care if the kitten drew blood.
Insects have microscopic claws, and that’s how
this one is hooked to me now. It might be
she can’t let go. I’m just annoyed it’s never me
who finds the dead body that gets washed up.
DOPPELGÄNGER
Once, I recognized myself
in a glass door, walking out
as I walked in. They say we share
sixty percent of our genes with
bananas, which explains
the bruised hump of my body
sitting in this chair day in, day
out. Ninety percent similar
to the rat in a water
maze, fur slicked to its forehead,
paddling toward despair. Scientists
measure how long it takes the rat
to discover there isn’t any way
to escape. Did you know
an infant rat will giggle if you
tickle its tummy? We truly are
the cruelest species. I, for one,
am getting on a plane before
we have destroyed our planet
so much the turbulence makes it
impossible to travel. I want to see
Vegas where a thousand
water fountains erupt with
colored lights mathematically
choreographed to music. I’ve
already bought tickets, even though
last week there was another
flood in the streets, and I’ve seen
the video of a man riding
the current, clinging to a pool
floatie in the shape of a turtle.
He gives the camera a thumbs up
before turning to look toward
a bend in the road. People
are laughing. In another
video, inside the casino,
blackjack tables are lily pads.
Perhaps my doppelgänger
is there, her curls sopped
heavy at her shoulders, huddling
by the stairs. This wasn’t the
payoff anyone was expecting.
If there is a ledge hidden just under
the surface for the rat to stand on
so she doesn’t drown, and where
she gets her sweet puff of cereal
as reward, the water is
too cloudy to see it.