Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones
A mother inherits a leather box containing scraps of family papers and photos dating back more than a century. Her daughter joins her on a moving quest to reconstruct their family history. Together they sift through archives and inspect eroded headstones, piecing together their ancestry in order to understand who they are. Elegiac yet spirited, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones is a scavenger hunt, a DNA test, a jigsaw puzzle of lineage. Cynthia Marie Hoffman is “a rising star”, a poet of infectious and meticulous vision.
Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Exploding Head, as well as Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI.