This Alaska
Carlie Hoffman
Reviewed in Publishers Weekly
Featured in Ordinary Plots
Interviewed in Queens Gazette
To live in an Alaska of the mind is to map the imagined cartography of winter on all that is physical. To dwell perpetually in a symbolic cold, and to emerge, with grace, unscathed. This book questions what it means to live and love in such a buried season. This Alaska interrogates all that emotional and physical intimacy cannot salvage or keep warm. Death and dreams are at the very center of this book. But life — and all it entails and circles and loses and loves — is at its heart.
HUNTING LESSON
In the lozenge-colored glow of the garage
you are the hero skinning a rabbit
bit by bit, careful not to hook a vein.
I am the daughter peering through the window.
What if the world really is a stale bowl of water
that we can’t keep our fingers out of—
The night sky stiffens in a squeal of light.
How can I look away?