Paul Hostovsky
Click on the "Archive" button above to return to the Features archives
Paul Hostovsky poems have won a Pushcart Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award from The Comstock Review, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, and the Frank Cat Press. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. His first full-length collection, Bending the Notes, is available from Main Street Rag.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Love Poem
I love this poem.
I would do anything
for this poem.
I am not above
stealing for example.
I stole in the past
and I stole from the past
and I’d gladly steal from your past
for this poem.
I would lie
for the sake of this poem.
I would lie in the face of this poem
just to make the poem face me.
Just to feel on my face the hot, sweet, faint
bad-tooth breath of the poem.
I could sink to anything.
I think I could kill.
I think I have killed
for the shape, the sheer
body of this poem.
Look how beautiful,
feel how impossible,
this slender, limned thing
weighing next to nothing,
saying next to nothing.
Saying everything.
Everything.
Every American Child
will be issued a blues harmonica at birth
and taught to bend the notes because the notes
are for bending. And no American child
will lock his harmonica up in a harmonica case
but will keep it in his pocket all his life
so that any lost, scattered, fallen, foreign thing,
be it lint, pollen, tobacco, sleet or spiders,
may enter through the holes and take up
residence there. And every American child
will know how to inspect his blues harmonica
without assistance or prompts, unscrewing the tiny
bolts with his own fingernail, and without losing
them or the even tinier serrated square nuts,
remove the metal flanges and test each delicate
reed by plucking it with the same fingernail
to see if it rings true. And every American
child will be required to carry his blues harmonica
with him on his person at all times, and to produce
his blues harmonica when asked for identification
with the blues. And every American child will
be expected to learn by heart the history of the blues
because the history of the blues is an American
story, which some American grownups can’t be trusted
to tell, much less sing, to their American children.
Bicycles
It’s like we’re all bicycles
and we all have these handlebars
and some of the handlebars and some
of the seats are incredibly beautiful
not to mention the way the wheels spin
and the bells ring
and the reflectors reflect and we can’t
look at them and we can’t stop looking at them
and all we really want is to get on top of them
and ride off into the sunset but they say
hey I’m not a bicycle okay
I have an eternal soul that you can’t see
because you’re so focused on my handlebars
look they’re only handlebars okay you’re such a
foot all you think about is pedaling
all you think about is wind wind wind
so then we nod a little guiltily and maybe
finger a spoke a little sheepishly
and ask for their forgiveness
and maybe they feel sorry for us then
because our desire feels ugly to us then
when really it’s beautiful
and they’re beautiful and we’re beautiful
and they lean over and offer us
their basket which is somehow attached
to the place where their handlebars meet and our lunch
is in there and their lunch is in there too
so we sit together munching our lunches
under the big trees
all desire gone for the time being
the wind playing up in the branches
our souls playing near our discarded shoes
kickstands gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight
© 2008-2009 Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Sharpfocus Media Services Website Design by Arnold Danielson
