Sturgeon Moon

Alicia Hoffman

I once made love in the green corn.
Isinglass, the tassels looked clear

as that, and phosphorescent. My back
in the middle of an empty field, rubbed

dry on August leaves leaving imprints
on my flesh like scales. Sturgeon

have none. No scales, that is. But sex?  
They spawn at twenty near Lake Champlain,

spindle-bodied and sultry in the estuaries.
From New England to Lake Superior,

the blood red moon. I, too, familiar with
the widening sky, gaped into a morphology

of fragmentation. Riverbed. Stream. Cassiopeia.
Branch of tree. Once, on a rock robed in light

in the desolate Adirondacks, I siphoned
a Methuselah, grew sleepy. Mornings, I gather

what I can. Unhook the curved lure from
my lip, walk into another season, smoldering.

Bio: Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Author of Railroad Phoenix (Aldrich Press), she has recently published poems in journals such as Radar Poetry, A Minor Magazine, Softblow, Hamilton Stone Review, Watershed Review, and elsewhere.