James Hoch
“James Hoch’s most recent collections are Radio Static (Green Linden Press 2022) and Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey (LSU 2022).
[Conflict]
First a field fenced off,
military, abandoned.
Then deer moving through,
Seneca, albino, white
like your hair, the shock
when you were born given over
to our father, whose name is
unsayable, and no more,
except passed on.
It was clear, the terms–
One thing strains another,
hoof and earth, at odds.
En masse, in mess,
we devoted time there,
made conflict our home,
and needed it
like any home.
One tires of need.
I am not sure how to live without
field, deer, the knocking
of heads, the split open,
how to curate empty,
the tense that thrives
on the other side of other.
[Without Us]
As if we could
leave our selves
wrecked in the comfort of their solitudes
by the ocean
and walk into the light
the surf shows and eats,
each breath, volute,
our newly shucked forms,
the low cloud a wave breaks
into being–
And have no words,
ask no more of each other–
What would it be like?
And what would they do–
Our old selves,
left apart, side by side,
wrapped, slowly turning to flame–
Would they rise?
Would they flail
to call us back?
[Martin House, Revisited]
Made of holes,
we thrived inside
a house pitched on a pole
in a high field.
Not kind, it took us back
often cold, flayed,
barely nested
no matter where we’d gone.
When our father died,
it was like the air
around the house
swarmed with winged bits
and we torqued ourselves
carved and fed.
When our mother died,
it was all gone–
house, pole, field.
the air emptied out.
Now we swirl hungry
around each other
trying to stay aloft
in the vacancy,
like we lost all bearing,
like we aren’t even birds anymore.