Cynthia Marie Hoffman
QUALITY OF LIFE
Part of the problem is that you were in a horrific accident on your way here, and you are already dead. Your body disrobes. The skins of your hands float freely in the marsh, starfish among the cattails. But would you say your quality of life is affected? You’ve left a dozen bodies behind just today. One drowned in the bathtub. Several wander blindly in the kitchen, clanging into each other like windchimes. One floats inside the sunken car just below the overpass. Now that it’s getting dark, the frogs are springing from their cool, fat bellies in the ditch. Who will come along in wading boots to scoop your palms into a net? You are just vapor and light, pooled loosely in this chair, neither ghost nor angel. Right at this moment, an airplane is crashing through the roof.
CYNTHIA MARIE HOFFMAN is the author of four collections of poetry: the forthcoming Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer. She is a former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Director’s Guest at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board. Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Fence, Blackbird, diode, Fence, jubilat, and The Los Angeles Review.
