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Give the Lake a Moment to Speak About the Horses

Give the Lake a Moment to Speak About the Horses

 
 

Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s annual Miami Book Fair preview. Please subscribe to SWWIM Every Day to watch a daily video by a woman-identifying writer appearing at Miami Book Fair 2024. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair and SWWIM. We look forward to seeing you at the Fair!


Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2024: Carlie Hoffman, Sunday, 11/24/2024, 11:00 am, Room 8303


I have a heart. It is full

of horses. My mother’s



heart, the horses.

In the lake’s center,



rain breathes down.

Someone lies bedridden.



Someone’s brother

goes estranged. For years,



hooves steep in mud,

a mare’s bent knee.



Closure is the rain

dripping over blood-lined leaves



above our dream lake. No,

the water was never blue.



No, don’t catch

this heart. Sadness, too,



it carries. Which horse

do you carry?



That’s what you need to know.


Carlie Hoffman is the author of the poetry collections One More World Like This World (Four Way Books, 2025); When There Was Light (Four Way Books, 2023), winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and This Alaska (Four Way Books, 2021), winner of the Northern California Publishers and Authors Gold Award in Poetry as well as a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award. Hoffman is the translator from the German of both Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger’s Blütenlese [Harvest of Blossoms], forthcoming from World Poetry Books, and White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph (Atelier Éditions, 2024), and the poems of Rose Ausländer. Hoffman’s other honors include a 92NY "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Prize and a Poets & Writers Amy Award. Hoffman's work appears in POETRY Magazine, Academy of American Poets, The Slowdown, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Small Orange Journal.


"Give the Lake a Moment to Speak About the Horses" from When There Was Light © 2023 by Carlie Hoffman. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.


Home / Hogar

Home / Hogar

Inevitable

Inevitable