Poems by Paul Hostovsky

 

The Rub

“You like?”
She barely
spoke English.

“I like.”
I met her my junior
year abroad—

Gauloises.
Baguettes.
Croque Monsieurs.

Art museums.
“You like?”
“I like.”

I stopped
going to class,
hung out with her instead,

smoking and drinking
Beaujolais and Stella
Artois. I learned

some French
that wasn’t in the book.
She gave me

her tongue.
I gave her mine.
I knew her

intimately
and not at all.
And that was

the tragedy:
To like or not to like
was the only

question.

 

Thomas Lux, Poet Who Celebrated the Absurd, Dies at 70

—New York Times obituary

I don’t think he would have appreciated that.
And I don’t mean the dying, or even
the number—a nice round respectable number—
so much as the choice of the adjectival noun: the absurd.
Or is it a nominalized adjective? He would have
liked the question, the not quite knowing, or caring,
or saying one way or the other in the poem,
if it were his poem. Which I like to think it sort of is
now that he’s dead and the writer of his obituary
got the headline wrong (like getting the headstone wrong)
and it’s left to me to right it: Thomas Lux
celebrated life (which, OK, is, granted, sometimes, yes,
absurd). He celebrated truth. “I like the story because
it’s true.” And beauty. And love. Always love. Which is
“always, regardless, no exceptions… blessed.” It’s a missed
opportunity, he called it in his workshops, when we don’t
call on the right words, the ones that are dying to be chosen,
as though sitting in a classroom with their hands raised
high, higher, practically levitating in their seats. Absurd
isn’t the right word. He was funny, yes, but dead
serious about the poems. He had fine, caramel hair
as long as a girl’s, but he had a mean lefty sidearm
that always hit home. He had lousy eye contact in front of the class,
or when standing up at the podium reading his poems,
but his gaze in the poems is laser, unflinching, lapidary.
Not a bad list, he would have said (three or more
adjectives make a list) but you can do better. Write
harder. This poetry business is hard work. “The thing
gets made, gets built, and you’re the slave…”
He slaved over every word, every pause, every line break.
“You make the thing because you love the thing.”
We love his poems because he loved them enough
to make us love them. Absurd? “Give me, please, a break!”

 

My Favorite Part of the Vacation

was the movie on the flight home—
because the movie
moved me. Especially
that scene where the old man with no legs
was begging in the train station.
And the young thug accosted him with a knife.
And asked him why he didn’t just
kill himself. I don’t like going to places on vacation
where the people sit around all day getting tan
while certain other people, who are usually a darker, more beautiful hue
than the people on vacation could hope to achieve
in a lifetime, serve them. The old man
was trembling now, fearful for his life.
And he half-whispered, half-gasped:
“Because I still like to sit in the sun sometimes
and feel the sun on my face.” And his face
was a beautiful walnut. And the young thug’s face
was a beautiful walnut, too. And all of a sudden
I felt the hot tears on my face at 50 thousand feet
in the air-conditioned cabin, and it felt
good to finally feel something.
Because I’d spent all week on vacation
sitting at the pool and sitting on the beach
and eating out in restaurants every day
and feeling full and feeling useless and feeling
like nothing I was doing or feeling was feeding
that part of me that most needs feeding, which was exactly
what I tried explaining to you when in the middle
of the beef bourguignon and free cocktails in first class
you turned to tell me how wonderful it all was
and found me weeping silently over my tray table.