Paul Hostovsky Verse-Virtual 2017 June

June 2017

I live with my wife and two step-children in the Boston area where I work as a sign language interpreter and Braille instructor. I think I may be the only person on the face of the planet who reads Braille while driving to work, left hand on the wheel, right hand on the dots, eyes on the road—eyes on the road. I also play a mean blues harmonica. My ninth collection of poetry, Is That What That Is, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. For more info, please visit my website: www.paulhostovsky.com

Nothing

He had nothing to say, he said,
adding only that saying so
was in itself finally beautiful and true.

That was his message. It was
something no one else had ever said
quite the way he was saying it.

Many thought they heard a quiet
sort of unexceptional wisdom in it
and nodded their heads in agreement,

nodded their heads to the music of it,
which wasn’t an easy music per se,
not the kind you’d get up and dance to,

or beat a drum to, or hum to yourself
in an abstracted sort of way. But it grew
louder. So when his enemies and detractors

tried to silence him, they couldn’t silence him.
Because he had nothing to say.
They could only scratch their heads and listen.

Man Praying in a Men’s Room

I can tell by the angle of his shoes
that he’s kneeling. Plus there’s something in the air
like straining. The sibilant hint
of a whisper. No toilet paper either--
I know because I considered sitting down in there myself
before settling in next door, here
where’ there’s paper, and even half a newspaper.
But the news in the neighboring stall
has gotten my attention. The trouble is
there’s no story. Not even a headline.
Just a pair of shoes, toes to the floor,
like a ballerina’s. And something in the air
like leaping. So I do the neighborly thing,
I make up the story myself
because I haven’t written anything all month
and everywhere I look these days there’s construction,
things going up all over, and why not
here? I start to built the story in my head
of my neighbor, praying. I give him
good reasons, grown children, a short
lunch break, bald head, small ears, an enormous
craving--the kind you need a Higher Power
to relieve you of. All of a sudden he sniffs.
Then he shifts and his story shifts with him.
He sniffs again, sniffles. A shudder. Unmistakably
he is sobbing. I hold my breath, stare straight ahead at a fuck
scratched in the metal door. “Excuse me,” says a voice
that sounds like drowning. And there’s his hand
waving beneath the divider. “Have you got any
toilet paper?” I unravel a generous portion,
for who knows how much he’ll be needing?--
my weeping neighbor, builder of cathedrals--
and I donate it wordlessly in a tenuous scroll.

(from Naming Names, Main Street Rag, 2014)

Reading Sharon Olds

I wonder how her husband feels
about his penis being all over her poems,
especially the earlier poems where
his penis was in its prime, her pen
was on fire, her nose for the poem
was sniffing the poem out uncannily
in every room in the house. Me, I'd
be tickled to have my penis appear
in a poem by Sharon Olds. In fact,
I sort of wonder what it would be like
to be making love to Sharon Olds
now that Sharon Olds is old and her
husband's penis appears less and less
in the poems. Last night I fell asleep
with her book lying open on my stomach,
a picture of the poet, still beautiful
in her late sixties, on the back jacket just
inches from my penis. And I dreamed
we were walking arm in arm like two old
lovers who were friends now, her children
and my children running ahead like scouts
pointing at something we couldn't make out,
calling impatiently to us, their small voices
like the poems we have yet to write. "Turn
up the heat," she said to me, and I knew
she could be talking about my poems
or she could be talking about my life,
and it would be the same thing because her eyes
were the same eyes, and her mouth was
slightly open, as if to say kiss me without
saying it. But I didn't kiss her in the dream,
I left her standing there, and I started running
really, really, really, really fast.

(from Naming Names, Main Street Rag, 2014)

My Lunch with Tony Hoagland

He couldn’t not
flirt with the waitress
who was sexy with
bad teeth. She reminded me
of his best poems,
the way they smile at you
through the pain. He wore
a gray baseball hat
like he was rooting for gray,
like there was too much
black or white in the world,
too much win or lose,
and much too much
rain or shine. We talked about
Dean Young
and Larry Levis
and Jimi Hendrix
and Buddhism and capitalism and narcissism,
and the corrugated green
pickles they placed at the edge
of our plates crunched softly in our mouths
as the conversation turned
to sadness. He kept saying
he was lucky. I kept thinking
his poems make me wish I’d written them.
So it felt a little like
plagiarism—the waitress
coming back with our credit cards
and giving me his credit card
by mistake, and me signing my name
to his lunch while he was
piddling in the men’s room--
and me calling it my lunch now
with Tony Hoagland.

(from Naming Names, Main Street Rag, 2014)

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