Poem-a-Day - "Lamb" by Richie Hofmann

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March 16, 2023 

Lamb

Richie Hofmann

I had a lamb I brought everywhere

who only had one eye.

At the train stations,

all the grown-ups would say, be mindful

of your things, little boy,

someone will steal right out of your pocket

or take the watch off your wrist.

My dad had a beautiful overcoat.

The lamb’s white fur got smudged.

My brother was a baby,

and in the restaurants,

the old waiters would pick him up

and kiss him again and again on the cheek

with their mustaches

and tell my parents

that they promised they would bring him back in a minute

but now they needed to show the chef.

I don’t remember when the eye became unglued

and who knows where it went.

On long train rides,

I remember falling asleep,

putting my finger in the hole where it used to be.

Once he had to go in an overhead bin,

and he was freezing when I kissed him again.

Copyright © 2023 by Richie Hofmann. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 16, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I traveled a lot as a child. One constant was my stuffed animal, which might have been a lamb or a calf. The poor thing got so beat up and dirty as I dragged him from place to place. I have a distinct memory of the fear that someone would take him from me. Stuffed animals are cute and bizarre, but they’re also early effigies of attachment, eros, and death.”
—Richie Hofmann

Richie Hoffman

Richie Hofmann is the author of A Hundred Lovers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2022) and Second Empire (Alice James Books, 2015). He teaches at Stanford University.

A Hundred Lovers

A Hundred Lovers
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2022)

“My Childhood” by Matthew Zapruder
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“The Thing Is” by Elaine Equi
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Thanks to Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Seuss’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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