James Hoch’s books are Miscreants and A Parade of Hands. Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey is due in 2022 from LSU press. His poems have appeared in POETRY, The New Republic, Washington Post, Slate, Chronicle Review of Higher Education, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines, and has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2019. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, St Albans School for Boys, The Frost Place and Summer Literary Seminars. Currently, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Ramapo College of NJ and Guest Faculty at Sarah Lawrence.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS by James Hoch

We are building a house 
small in the woods, 

refuge from disquiet
or vague boredom.

It must weather distance,
the hurt of proximity.

We do not mean to,
though we are so good 

at breaking, scavenging 
old bone and feather, stalks of 

wildflowers outlasting 
the hour of their heads. 

You are boss, and look boss, 
hammer and spackle knife

and blue hair, plastering.
At a window you like the way 

open sounds, so you mouth it
until the word too becomes

some thing to occupy.
You can’t take it with you, 

and the house won’t stay 
when you’re gone. 

Wind is saying this, 
the way wind likes to say things,

likes the door swinging,
petals over the floor,

then floor, then house, 
then whatever was before.

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