Good Boy

by Richard Hoffman

His mother’s
chapped lips, flecks
of Lucky
she said thpt, thpt
to be rid of,

he cracked, bled
without warning,
held back words,
made himself
a zero,
a portal for smoke.

 

Richard Hoffman is the author of Half the House: a Memoir and the poetry collections Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club, and his latest, Emblem. A fiction writer as well, his Interference & Other Stories was published in 2009. His work has appeared in Ascent, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, The Literary Review, Poetry, Witness, and other magazines. He teaches at Emerson College and currently serves as chair of PEN New England. (12/2011)