PHILIP HOFMEISTER

FLOATING HOUSE DREAM


You have the vague sensation that
The house is rising up, that you have
Left something tangible below you,
Something to hold on to. Now it is
All air and lightness, the dark treetops
Sinking past the sash of the window.
The house is empty, has the abandoned
Smell of sawdust and long, unlit corridors;
You will have to be careful. Anyone
Could be just waiting for you to
Make a wrong move, say the wrong thing.
You watch the cirrus tendrils flit past,
Kissing the walls, the flowerpots,
the parapet, the way a man might
Who reaches as his lover goes
For the last time. You feel ravenous
For something to weight you down.
The cupboards have nothing in them
But boxes of Roman coins, pigeon
Shit, a note that says, "Buy eggs, hammers."
Chill from the mesosphere creeps in
Through fissures, holes, invisible to
Sight (or touch for that matter).
You wish there was a place, at least,
To take a nap, to rest your eyes;
But this home is no longer yours,
The corners unsafe, unfamiliar.
Nothing is where you put it last.
It rockets upwards, on a course
You do not know, to stars perhaps
That glitter cold and nameless, where
A loneliness lives in the alien jaws.
The home soars: you belong to it now.

Home

About Me

Some things don't work out the way you want them to. Like my dream of becoming a land shark fisherman. Instead, I'm a post-doctoral research at the Center for Research in Language at UCSD. My research looks at how the complexity of linguistic representations affects memory retrieval. I'm beginning (emphasis on beginning) to investigate some of the neural correlates of referential form processing and filler-gap dependency processing. I also like bicycles and fancy food.

Papers

A linearization account of either . . . or constructions

Processing accounts for Superiority effects

Representational Complexity and Memory Retrieval in Language Comprehension (PhD Thesis)

Poems

Not This World

Pescadero Creek

To My Wife

Floating House Dream

Photos

CV

CV [.pdf format]

CV [.html format]