Paul Hostovsky - Three poems

First Line

In the end of days what you need is a good first line.
To distract you from the truth with its own truth.
The way pain can sometimes distract from pain.
The way beauty can sometimes distract from pain.
The way a good bedtime story can light up the dark
side of an entire planet, given a little room
with a bed in the corner, a few right words, a child
listening. In the end of days what you need is a good
beginning. Something hopeful and trembling like a tongue.
Something open and unselfconscious like a mouth,
listening to the words, and the music of the words.
Something steeply rocking like a ship, or a sleep, heavy,
floating, viable, smelling of saltwater and infinite possibility.




Distance

I love coming back here
to this place where I was happy,
or maybe I was unhappy
and I keep coming back because
I’m not here anymore--not
there anymore. There’s a difference
between a great sorrow and a beautiful
catastrophe--beautiful for the way it
brought people together over it.
In the flying dream
I slip my fingers into the sidewalk cracks
and pull myself along, hand over hand,
reaching forward with bent elbows,
doing the crawl on dry land--
pull and recovery, pull and recovery--
scaling the earth horizontally until
suddenly I’m airborne--the sorrows
glinting in the sun, the catastrophes
dotting the backyards
like tiny swimming pools.




Going Native

I was sick of the country
of me, sick of the faces
like mine, sick of my own ponderous
tongue. Your house was open,
your language limpid
like water everywhere seeking its own
sounds. I jumped in,
immersed myself
in the vowels of your tongue,
the consonant clusters
on your lips on the way
to learning your ways.
I fell in love with you and
yours. I became fluid, fluent,
dexterous. But I have remained
myself and inexorably other
to you. It’s the only thing harder
than having been othered
for loving you.



Paul Hostovsky's ninth book of poetry, Is That What That Is, was published in 2017 by FutureCycle Press. His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: www.paulhostovsky.com

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