#MIDDLEBURY
Book of Statues
Richie Hofmann
Because I am a boy, the untouchability of beauty
is my subject already, the book of statues
open in my lap, the middle of October, leaves
foiling the wet ground
in soft copper. “A statue
must be beautiful
from all sides,” Cellini wrote in 1558.
When I close the book,
the bodies touch. In the west,
they are tying a boy to a fence and leaving him to die,
his face unrecognizable behind a mask
of blood. His body, icon
of loss, growing meaningful
against his will.
About this poem
“I was 11 years old when Matthew Shepard was murdered on Oct. 12, 1998. Around the same time, I was working on a school project on Italian Renaissance sculptures, so many of which depict male nudes. These two events are linked in my mind, as I think it was the first time I began to glimpse the costs of being a body that desires.” – Richie Hofmann
About Richie Hofmann
Richie Hofmann is the author of “Second Empire” (Alice James Books, 2015). He teaches at Emory University and divides his time between Atlanta and Chicago.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Richie Hofmann. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
