Hearts & Bones

November 6, 2024

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.

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