A memoir in prose poems about the poet's lifelong journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

Exploding Head

Prose poetry, collage, genealogy, family history.

Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones

A Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. History and myth of birth and medicine.

Paper Doll Fetus

Winner of the 2010 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. Epistolary travel poems.

Sightseer

An account of how Metallica's song "Enter Sandman" impacted the author as a teenager with OCD, experiencing a terrifying car accident, and later, as an adult, finding joy through an unexpected cover of the song. 

The Beast in Your Head

Three prose poems about OCD from Cynthia Marie Hoffman's 2024 book Exploding Head. 

Seven Darknesses, Diagnosis, and Therapy

"Right at this moment, an airplane is crashing through the roof."

Quality of Life

Lately, you get a feeling you might die. The world squeezes in on itself. A cloud is a hundred elephants, and the northern pike surface from the marsh like blimps. 

Touched

In your dreams, you are always running from the shadow that chases you through the forest. At night, an owl screams a womanly, murderous scream. 

Exploding Head Syndrome

The dark language of foliage creeps at the garden gate. You would never hurt yourself. You only worry you would hurt yourself. 

Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Books

Selected work