In the left ventricle of Ohio, near the central aorta,
in the yellow-bellied liver of the livery,
in the Monongahela. Below every sunflower field
the landscape spreads like replicating cells.
It is the growth of a body, the way the womb
carries the egg and sperm till some mystery
spurs into bone. Today, I can see the whole country
birth itself from the wind of its ancestry. Who am I
but an atom in the atmosphere of history?
On my darkest days, I am an entire universe.
I am god casting the ballot for my inner sinners.
Judge and jury. A library of facts in a nation
that has no future. Today, I am a placeholder
for a vote that hasn’t yet been cast. It sticks
like a stent in the ventricle of land that juts
like a severed limb into the Gulf of Mexico.
It curves like a sore into the delta. It splays its legs
on a gurney and breaks its water in all directions.
Riding the current now into an umbilical world
I am both within and without. I watch the blue
blood oxygenate purple and turn red in its trap.
We are roped and bound. And I am hungry
to cure what has diseased us here, in the innards
of a country that has yet to excise its growth.
–
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop and is the author of three collections, most recently ANIMAL (Futurecycle Press). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including Thrush, Radar Poetry, Trampset, The Night Heron Barks, Tar River Poetry, The Penn Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, One Art, and elsewhere.
