Richie Hofmann: Choice of the week [ed.Terence Winch]

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Masculine Beauty

I bought a bag of hard green pears today.

I came home and sat in our room

listen to music for hours

Solo piano, things from France, right from the start

of the century.

When we were very young, your forgiveness

humiliated me. I would know

You would sleep when I come back.

It’s night outside

and raining. It’s the same night

that fills the ruins.

You are naked, sleepy, lost. Stay the way you are.

In my favorite shots

You can hear the pianist breathing.

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Richie Hofmann’s new book of poetry is A Hundred Lovers, edited by Alfred A. Knopf. He is the author of Second Empire (2015) and his poetry has recently appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books and The Yale Review. He teaches at Stanford University as a fellow of Ruth Lilly and Wallace Stegner.

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Troy Caperton, sleeping Endymion. 2016