Paul Hostovsky

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Poetry at the Burger King

Where is it? It’s not here.
All these plastic chairs and tables
are empty. Nothing but a lot of
dead meat here, and this associate
behind the counter mumbling: Welcome
to Burger King. May I take your order?
Mine is the only car outside in the sad
parking lot ringed by a handful
of gimpy trees, a blue dumpster in the corner.
Beyond that, the highway where I
came from, and where I will return.
If your daily life seems poor, said Rainer
Maria Rilke, do not blame it. Blame yourself.
Tell yourself you are not poet enough
to call forth its riches. I’m fingering a salty
corner of my empty French fries pocket,
licking my fingers, looking out the window
and telling myself I am not poet enough,
when I notice two kids running, sort of
galloping and hopscotching across
the sad parking lot ahead of their parents
and into the Burger King. They are
very happy to be here, this little girl and boy,
jumping up and down now at the counter,
dancing to the song of the associate
which wasn’t a song until their dancing
made it so. There are so many riches
on the menu, they can’t make up their minds.
And while their parents order they play
duck duck goose, touching all the tables,
and all the chairs, the girl behind the boy,
following him, copying him, and laughing
louder and louder, because it’s all so wonderful
here at the Burger King, which they seem to have
all to themselves, except for one man in a booth
smiling, writing something down on a piece of paper.

Paul Hostovsky

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Cup

When I find it in the basement
on the shelf above the dryer
under a pile of his old undershirts

I take it down and turn it over
and over, remembering how
uncomfortable he said it was

in spite of the rubber edge
and vent-holes, the plastic shell
shaped to fit a twelve-year-old penis

and testicles, which were being
tested on the football field that first
day at Pop Warner. All the fathers

stood around, talking football,
but all I could contribute was,
"Growing up, I played soccer myself...”

Then I was standing a little apart
like a pedestrian looking for my son
in traffic—football helmets and identical

red jerseys in gridlock, and I couldn’t
find him. Because I couldn’t remember
his number, and they all looked the same

running around out there for the love of
yardage. I felt a little panicky. Technically,
I’d lost him, lost sight of him, and everyone

knows what happens to kids who fall through
the hatches on the football fields of life . . .
Then I noticed—hanging back in the end zone

all alone—number 26, adjusting his protective
cup. And I kept my eyes on him until
the day he left for college. And finding it now

all these years later, I hold it for a moment
against my own testicles, whence he came. And then
I hold it up to my face, like an oxygen mask.

Paul Hostovsky

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Battling the Wind and Everything Else

My neighbor—the one with the flagpole
and the flag, and the pickup truck
and the patriotic bumper sticker and the perfect
lawn, and the leaf-blower with the power pack—
never seems to see me when I wave to him.
In fact, I am trying to get his attention
right now, but his eyes are on the enemy,
the leaves. He is aiming the long barrel
of his leaf-blower at them, and blowing
them away. But the wind is counting its money
and throwing it away all over his lawn again.
He is Sisyphus pushing one red leaf or another
up the berm of a perfect lawn forever. And I feel
sorry for him, the way I might feel sorry for
a large carnivorous bird in a shrinking ecosystem
on the nature channel. I know when he looks at me
he sees a guy who is half-assedly, half-heartedly
raking the leaves around on his disgrace-of-a-lawn
the way a kid pushes the peas around on his dinner plate
with his fork, trying to make it look like there are fewer
peas than before, when really there are still the exact
same number of peas; and he sees the leaves messing up
his lawn as my leaves, because his leaves are all in order—
he sees to that. So the ones that are crossing the border
and have no right to be here and should just go back
to where they came from, must be mine. I see this all
written on his face as he grits his teeth and stares
the dancing leaves down, then blows them up
over the edge of his property. But they keep on
dancing back again because there's a party
going on here, and the wind is counting its money
and throwing it away. So I walk right up to him—
I get right in his face so he can’t not see me,
and I wave hello. He disengages his leaf-blower,
after revving it a few times first at the intersection
of our meeting. And I say to him, “I’ve been trying
to get your attention.” And he says, “You got it.”
And I say, “How you doing?” And he says, “Battling
the wind and everything else.” And I say, “I can see that.”
And he says, “How you doing?” And I say, “Good. Good.”

Paul Hostovsky

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In Praise of the Quitter

Praise the quitter for standing up for
something more important than not giving up,
something more worth fighting for than
simply winning, or simply living; namely,
seeing—that there is another way,
a quiet, leaf-strewn way that leads
off the battlefield and down through the trees
to somewhere you can’t see from here,
though he sees it, the way others see
victory, and they stand up for the team,
and they step up to the plate—he stands and steps
lightly off the field and into the adjacent
woods, walking softly down a path
where the courtships of small animals go on
in the leaves, and the birds are tunneling
and darting up through the ramifications
to the top branches, the best seats, where they look
out over the fields of life. And what they see is
not the games, not the people playing the games;
what they see is what the quitter sees: a great sky
and earth, and lots of little bugs swimming around
for their dear short lives, which are shorter
than an inning; half an inning; shorter than a swing.
Praise the quitter flapping his tiny insect-wings—
he is aerodynamically impossible, yet look at him
go! swimming against the rules, swimming against
the odds, up through the air and off into the sunset.

Paul Hostovsky

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Affair in the Office

It belonged to all of us in a way
because we all shared
in the surprise
that it existed at all,
and also, privately, in the thrill
of the two lovers
(none more surprised than they)
who’d worked together in the same sad office
with all of us for all
these years, and both of them married,
and both unhappily. It was
a sad office, like so many
sad offices, full of the inexorable sadness
of cubicles, and computers, and empty
of love, or so we thought, for no one
saw it growing—it must have
gotten in through a high
bit of laughter in the lunchroom,
then a glancing away
and a looking back again, the way
it sometimes will. And when it got out
in whispers around the water cooler
we all drank from it, we
drank it in, and in this way
it refreshed us, and amazed us,
and belonged to us because
we all took it home, took it
with us in the car, or on the train, sat with it
in rush hour, shaking our heads as though
we were listening to music, and in a way
we were listening to music,
shaking our heads and smiling,
looking out the window, fingers drumming.

Paul Hostovsky

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Kissing the Cat

In the catalog of my addictions
which is in the order I acquired them,
the mouth of my cat Pinky
is preceded only by my thumb—

His mouth was the only mouth
that didn’t speak the language
of our house and television,
so I knew he’d never tell

as one by one my self-propelled
fish-mouth kisses found his mouth
and exploded, and his eyes
dilated like the binocular view from space

of a world going up in smoke,
and his ears changed shape like a hat
changing heads on his head—
Still as a water jug, he sat

enduring as I sipped his spout
on the lime couch
in front of our television, which
in the catalog of my addictions

would be the third entry.
According to my sponsor Phil,
either we give them up in the order
they’re killing us—which is often the reverse

order of their acquisition—or else
we simply exchange them one for another
and they kill us cumulatively.
Pinky died when I was off at college

learning to shotgun beers and roll a joint
while steering a car with only one knee.
I never graduated. But I did finally get sober.
And when I finally got sober, I got a kitten—

He tottered around my apartment, tentative
and awkward as my new sobriety.
So I named him Thumbs. And now we’re two
old toms living together, complacent

and fixed. We’ve given up everything
including sex. He mostly likes to sit
on the kitchen table, next to my cup and my plate,
while I’m eating. And mostly I just like

to let him.

Paul Hostovsky

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Weeping

For a long time it was just a trickle,
and it came the way people come trickling in
who are late to a great gathering
of people, silently,
self-consciously,
holding the door, holding
the breath, letting it
close softly behind before the next
jagged inhalation opened it
again. And again. Then it grew
louder, like a great gathering of people
churning and swelling and overflowing
the small enclosed spaces chosen especially
to contain it: the car, an empty
stopped elevator, a bathroom with
the door locked, the door
of the throat opening, the great
sobs forcing it open now like a
birth, like an actual person being born into a world
full of people, in a very small room
with only one person.