Richie Hofmann

Siegfried

My pillow records our scents and movements.
I’ve seen you in costumes—
once you were a silhouette against a scrim
to me—but now you are naked
in my bed, on an afternoon, on a Monday.
I study your body hair. Briefly, the neighbors’ windows
make ringed planets on the ceiling.
We are thirty, we have other lives to get to.
We have both been encouraged by venerable institutions,
but do not know if we will be artists in the autumn,
or if we will nap together in another city.
Lying on your giant’s body, I am impotent
and afraid. We are entering another summer
in a perfect room.

Richie Hofmann is the author, most recently, of A Hundred Lovers (Knopf, 2022).