Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze

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• Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze
• Richie Hofmann (bio)

Maze

Room of flowers, room of hunger: the hoursI could sleep inside.

There was something I wanted my life to be. Roomin which I possessed someone

and was in turn possessed.Rooms in which I reached for a man, even when he

was with someone else. Once I was so scared,I slept in my shoes.

Another time, I stood knee-deepin chlorinated water and thought I’d be lost

forever: the graffiti unintelligible, the smell of cigarettes, the foreign tongues. [End Page 289] Still, the jets of the whirlpool pulsated. I dried off; I made the damp towel a pillow.

The crowded roomsof the bars made them cool. Young people were shouting

into my ears. I was growing up,like them and not

like them. In the tall mirror,I could see my back.

Was thishow I was going to live? I took long baths

in quiet rooms. Room of jealousy,room of flowers—sometimes I felt pulled forward

as if a perfect leashwere guiding me. Other times from behind, knuckles nudging

the small of my back, urging me deeper in pajama bottoms

toward other rooms. [End Page 290]

Maze

Horny, half-mad, the smell of old flowers encases

this man’s roomlike an anonymous tomb—miracle

to be aliveand then to die. In the thick of an island thick

with a history that belongs toeveryone and no one,

feral goats shit and mate and clamber in dust, kicking it up.

Don’t you hate animals? Don’t you hate being an animal?

His animal? Still it feels good when the sun comes up [End Page 291] and warms the bedlike the cold surface of the ancient ocean.

And by mid-day, no shade anywhere.When did the flowers first die?

When did they stop drinking water from the vase? Water-colored linen

when nights are spent nakedand animal-like

in his arms, entrapped by sleep, human sleep, sleep

which separates me from lover and also from self. So obedient. [End Page 292]

Maze

The streetlamps made the leaves black. The night is a place of initiation.

Virgins get fed to it. Beaches and ruins. Skeletal buildings.

The trees were youngbut the marble was old. My jaw hurt.

I was young but my dream was old. A force

was galloping toward me. I took a bus, a bus with locked windows

to get here. The thing I looked for—I knew him by his beard.

My skin touched by his mouth— saliva, cooked meat, red wine. [End Page 293]

Back home, the kids were cruel to me. When I was happy they called me

a faggotto puncture that happiness. I was holding a rope

walking down to the unlit beach.I could hear grown men yelping. I hid my glasses

in a bathing suit pocket. The thing I was looking for— he was an animal

who followed me. The lovera faceless presence. But

I saw his face.His watch-face glowed. When he saw I was bleeding

in my ugly sandals,he said, You can go home, I won’t hurt you. [End Page 294]

Richie Hofmann

Richie Hofmann is the author of two collections of poems, Second Empire and A Hundred Lovers.

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