Richie Hofmann
Coquelicot
I pretend to sleep when he leaves.
He rubs his thumb across my chapped lips,
he touches the hair grown long around my ears.
I remember smelling him and the garrigue.
I leave by fast train, passing through suburbs,
poverty, dilapidated buildings so close
to destruction from within, poppies in full sun,
the blurring dross, the violet
graffiti, then nothing. My dirty clothes
packed above me, the t-shirt that carries his smell,
the weak black pepper of him, the t-shirt
he wiped his penis with.
I’m afraid of falling asleep,
because I will desire him in my sleep.
Richie Hofmann is the author of a collection of poems, Second Empire. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, and the New York Times Style Magazine, and have been honored with the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.