"Book of Statues" by Richie Hofmann

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. This poem of awakening but also loss of innocence touches me deeply. I recall all too well when Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered...I was 34. As this poem references, Shepard's death became a symbol for gay men everywhere that the world continues to be a dangerous place for us.

Hofmann says:
"I was eleven years old when Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998; he died on the twelfth of October. 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."

Book of Statues
by 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.

Richie Hofmann - Photo by Marcus Jackson

https://www.richiehofmann.com/