R-KV-R-Y
Spring/Summer Poetry
by Paul Hostovsky
Statement
When they asked me why I stole the flute I said
because it was beautiful
leaning there against the wall like a spine
seductively, and gleaming
within easy reach of my single
paid for seat
where I sat all alone admiring it
as the orchestra warmed up and the scales of the flutes
climbed higher than all the rest of the instruments,
reaching up even to the chandeliers
where they seemed to be warning of some danger, of me perhaps
for I'd already made up my mind what I would say
when they asked me why I stole the flute.
Then they asked me why I returned the flute and I said
because it hurt, it was that beautiful, that
impossible. Sharp like a spine--
the keys at first digging into my skin
when I slipped it under my shirt as the lights dimmed,
then ran with it out the door and down the street and through
the night. But also, from the moment I lifted the thing
I couldn't put it down: wherever I tried
to stash it or ditch it, it stuck out painfully
like some herniated part of the body
of beauty, the inner beauty of the world: secret, silver
and singing out from the enclosure of
my desire for it. I couldn't keep it, I couldn't lose it,
I couldn't even play it. So I gave it back and now
I only want to be believed.
Denial
When I was small I had this fear of big
dogs turning up round bends and corners, hounds
that all along the long and convoluted zig-
zag way I walked home from school to confound them
found me--always. I had but one defense
which I learned from Winnie the Pooh: simply hum
a little tune. It throws them off the scent
of your fear. Pretend to consider the weather: tum ti tum.
Denial, that old sweet song in the face of death.
It's always been the way to go, even
in the mouth of death--the jowls and drool and halitosis.
Denial, perfected, is a faith that works. Take St. Stephen
full of arrows, take the Gnostics full of gnosis.
We sang out sweetly who denied, though we breathed in
dog breath.
Epitaph for An Actor
He was good at voices.
Accents, affects, rings of things.
A dialect geographer
moving among men's diphthongs
and their r-droppings,
learning them all
by heart.
He appeared and disappeared,
himself like an r,
leaving one mouth for another, one
place for another, a floater
staying afloat by never
getting down to the heart
of anything.
He was good at voices though.
And faces.
His mouth was the only place
all the voices and faces
met. His mouth was a kiss. It was
many kisses.
Greenhouse
My Aunt Ellie lived in a green-
house. This was in Irvington
New Jersey. A Jew alone
is a Jew in danger, her husband
said. Their daughter, my cousin,
wanted to go where she wanted
to go. They said it was a big
mistake. In a greenhouse you
cultivate certain delicate
non-indigenous plants. The house
was green and my cousin fell
deeply in love with a black man.
When she married him her father
sat shiva for her, meaning that
he mourned her for dead. But
she was only living over in East
Orange. She had two beautiful
daughters who never knew
their grandfather on their mother's
side. Because she was dead to him
until the day he died. That was the day
we all went over to Aunt Ellie's house
where she was sitting shiva. We met
my cousin's husband Toe, for the first time,
and their two daughters, Leah and Aleesha.
And we opened all the windows in
the greenhouse on that day, for outside
it was a beautiful spring day and we
broke out the expensive delicate china
from Germany which they kept locked up
in a glass breakfront in the hall.
Purple Toothbrush
after Gluck
I like watching you brush your teeth
with your teeth in your hands. Your hands are
my favorite part of you, the part that
self-consciously covers your mouth when you
smile without your teeth. If you brushed
your teeth more often when they were still
in your head, you might still have them today.
That head should give some thought to the way
you have been doing things all of your life,
like squeezing that tube of toothpaste from
the top down, night after night, when you should have been
pinching it upward from the crimp, avoiding
waste. Watching you now in the bathroom with your
purple toothbrush in one hand, your teeth in the other,
a perfectly good tube of toothpaste in the wastebasket,
I think you are an ugly toothless wasteful thing
and I wish you would just hurry up and die
because I know when you are gone I will finally
start loving you properly, fully and completely,
and probably not before.
Paul Hostovsky has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Free Lunch, New
Delta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Visions International, Nebo, Slant, FRiGG,
Driftwood, Heartlodge, Rock & Sling, ByLine and others. He works in Boston as
an Interpreter for the Deaf.
Spring/Summer Poetry
by Paul Hostovsky
Statement
When they asked me why I stole the flute I said
because it was beautiful
leaning there against the wall like a spine
seductively, and gleaming
within easy reach of my single
paid for seat
where I sat all alone admiring it
as the orchestra warmed up and the scales of the flutes
climbed higher than all the rest of the instruments,
reaching up even to the chandeliers
where they seemed to be warning of some danger, of me perhaps
for I'd already made up my mind what I would say
when they asked me why I stole the flute.
Then they asked me why I returned the flute and I said
because it hurt, it was that beautiful, that
impossible. Sharp like a spine--
the keys at first digging into my skin
when I slipped it under my shirt as the lights dimmed,
then ran with it out the door and down the street and through
the night. But also, from the moment I lifted the thing
I couldn't put it down: wherever I tried
to stash it or ditch it, it stuck out painfully
like some herniated part of the body
of beauty, the inner beauty of the world: secret, silver
and singing out from the enclosure of
my desire for it. I couldn't keep it, I couldn't lose it,
I couldn't even play it. So I gave it back and now
I only want to be believed.
Denial
When I was small I had this fear of big
dogs turning up round bends and corners, hounds
that all along the long and convoluted zig-
zag way I walked home from school to confound them
found me--always. I had but one defense
which I learned from Winnie the Pooh: simply hum
a little tune. It throws them off the scent
of your fear. Pretend to consider the weather: tum ti tum.
Denial, that old sweet song in the face of death.
It's always been the way to go, even
in the mouth of death--the jowls and drool and halitosis.
Denial, perfected, is a faith that works. Take St. Stephen
full of arrows, take the Gnostics full of gnosis.
We sang out sweetly who denied, though we breathed in
dog breath.
Epitaph for An Actor
He was good at voices.
Accents, affects, rings of things.
A dialect geographer
moving among men's diphthongs
and their r-droppings,
learning them all
by heart.
He appeared and disappeared,
himself like an r,
leaving one mouth for another, one
place for another, a floater
staying afloat by never
getting down to the heart
of anything.
He was good at voices though.
And faces.
His mouth was the only place
all the voices and faces
met. His mouth was a kiss. It was
many kisses.
Greenhouse
My Aunt Ellie lived in a green-
house. This was in Irvington
New Jersey. A Jew alone
is a Jew in danger, her husband
said. Their daughter, my cousin,
wanted to go where she wanted
to go. They said it was a big
mistake. In a greenhouse you
cultivate certain delicate
non-indigenous plants. The house
was green and my cousin fell
deeply in love with a black man.
When she married him her father
sat shiva for her, meaning that
he mourned her for dead. But
she was only living over in East
Orange. She had two beautiful
daughters who never knew
their grandfather on their mother's
side. Because she was dead to him
until the day he died. That was the day
we all went over to Aunt Ellie's house
where she was sitting shiva. We met
my cousin's husband Toe, for the first time,
and their two daughters, Leah and Aleesha.
And we opened all the windows in
the greenhouse on that day, for outside
it was a beautiful spring day and we
broke out the expensive delicate china
from Germany which they kept locked up
in a glass breakfront in the hall.
Purple Toothbrush
after Gluck
I like watching you brush your teeth
with your teeth in your hands. Your hands are
my favorite part of you, the part that
self-consciously covers your mouth when you
smile without your teeth. If you brushed
your teeth more often when they were still
in your head, you might still have them today.
That head should give some thought to the way
you have been doing things all of your life,
like squeezing that tube of toothpaste from
the top down, night after night, when you should have been
pinching it upward from the crimp, avoiding
waste. Watching you now in the bathroom with your
purple toothbrush in one hand, your teeth in the other,
a perfectly good tube of toothpaste in the wastebasket,
I think you are an ugly toothless wasteful thing
and I wish you would just hurry up and die
because I know when you are gone I will finally
start loving you properly, fully and completely,
and probably not before.
Paul Hostovsky has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Free Lunch, New
Delta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Visions International, Nebo, Slant, FRiGG,
Driftwood, Heartlodge, Rock & Sling, ByLine and others. He works in Boston as
an Interpreter for the Deaf.
