Poetry By Alicia Hoffman

Matt P. CC




Once Upon a Time 

There was a home made of broken glass.
Once upon a time there was a shoe that 

didn’t fit. Yes, there was a ball. Orchestra
and silk gown. And always, on the wall, 

an old clock ticking. Every tale, a re-
winding of time. Every fable, a reversal.

A return to. I want to reach toward the girl 
gathering summer berries near the stream. 

I want to shelter the lost fawn, reunite the lover.
Let me tell you about the fountain of all stories. 

There is a bird on a high branch cawing. There 
is a small mouse hidden in the eaves. This life 

will take your blood. So carry your rucksack 
of apples, your kiln-fired jug. Tune your ear 

outward. Listen to the language of the earth.
There is only so much that can be said of 

the dangers around the bend. Yes, goblins exist. 
Yes, too, to the witch. She pours her potions 

into the stitching of books you love to read 
about children lost in the dark forest. She turns 

you into a breadcrumb. She turns you into a worm. 
She spells it out so simply – There is a world 

not meant to hurt you. You must run before 
it gets worse. Only survival breaks this curse.

​




Trestle, 1992

We would follow the trail, littered
with empty Zima, past poplar and 
maple and nearer the muddy banks 
of the Schuylkill, more lyreleaf sage, 
sweetspine dogwood. The greenery 
came past our adolescent hips, grazed 
our midriffs as we found our way, climbed 
upward to the shirtless boys loitering
on the abandoned trestle. They would 
gather there, smoke Marlboro reds, 
double dare each other to jump headfirst 
into the river. It was dangerous. Legends 
of mysterious rocks, old cement dumped 
from the railroad depot, invisible under 
the current, ready to smash a boy’s skull, 
but that just added to the thrill. We were 
all there for the same thing, something 
we needed to take from that place, something
not easy to find. We were of one mind, baking 
in the August heat of suburban Philadelphia. 
We would eat ramen from someone’s kitchen, 
lick our fingers and trail them through sugar 
for dessert, thrust our hips and gaze into mirrors 
full of want. We were parentless. Aimless arrows 
and it was summer, so we egged on the boys 
as their perfect bodies sliced through the water 
twenty-five feet below. Us girls never jumped. 
It was enough to be near them as they whooped 
and hollered and we watched, combustible as 
a lit match. We passed a cigarette, the smoke 
permeating our permed hair, lips sticky with gloss. 
We were practicing a lot – smoke rings, the art 
of inhale, exhale. We were trying to breath fluidly 
through the smoke in our lungs, the growing 
suffocation of our bodies. We were in the air but 
we were also underneath the water. We were 
drowning, searching for the surface of our lives. 
We held our breath and closed our eyes. We held 
on to each other and somehow made it out alive.

​




Witness Trees 

Let’s start in uncharted territory. Some hazy future
void of hardwood. Let’s move like humans on a zip

line back past the last century, past bulldozer and 
asphalt, shopping mall, parking lot, megalopolis, 

airport runway, mountain fracking, firewalls. For
what it’s worth we saved so many species. Listen

close and you can hear the zoning board, the urban-
suburban sub-committee, the clean sweep volunteer

alone on the street with a trash bag and a pick-up stick
as we hit rewind, past the times that time stopped cold

as hard frost on a stately elm’s branches. We’ve all 
seen some things. In Oxford, Mississippi, say, where

the town square centers around a courthouse. Magnolias
drop blossoms in early June and you can hear the dark

past, the way the wind whips through the trees there 
are no need for plaques—or Paradise, California. Let’s 

start with the lack of water, go back to the lone man 
in the woods with a match—the xylem is a heartwood box,
 
the phloem is a bitter sugar. Run the tape again—pause 
the times where time imprints itself into vascular cambium, 

tannin, resin. Next time I’m outside I’ll listen to the surveyors, 
the sentinels. Yoshino Cherry. Willow Oak. My aging body 

coasting through this blip of time. I’ll start with my own small 
history and the vastness sprouting under the ground of a sapling. 

​


​
​Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop and is the author of four collections, most recently Browsing as a Guest (Gnashing Teeth Publishing). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including Thrush, Trampset, The Night Heron Barks, Tar River Poetry, The Penn Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, Typishly, Radar Poetry, and elsewhere. Find her at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com