Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

 

Not This Time

 

I see you, hope; oh no you don’t, you ghost

in my arms, you anodyne, you elsewhere.

Again you’ve left me counting the cost

 

of my credulity — thwarted, double-crossed.

What fool expects the world to be fair?

I see you, hope; oh no you don’t, you ghost

 

ship, once more making for the rocky coast

of desire, strewn with wrecks — don’t you dare!

Again you’ve left me counting the cost

 

and trying to decide which part hurts most,

my friend’s duplicity or my despair.

I see you, hope; oh no you don’t. You ghost

 

me over and over, tease me with almost

and nearly but leave me neither here nor there.

Again you’ve left me counting the cost

 

of burning bridges I would not have crossed

but for your promises, my trust beyond repair.

I see you, hope; oh no you don’t, you ghost.

Not this time, you liar, you cheat. Get lost.

 

Richard Hoffman has published five books of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; and Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book
Award for poetry, and his most recent, People Once Real. His other books include Half the House: a Memoir, the 2014 memoir Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories. He is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College, and nonfiction editor of
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices.

 

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx