paul hostovsky
3 poems
**
To A Landscaper
You smell like a lawnmower, love.
Come sit your grassy ass down
on the bed. I want to taste the green
sweat spreading like wealth all over
your body, the lawns of the rich and
gasoline commingling on your skin and
bones. I want to feel the suburbs
rub off on us like the laughing poor
streaking through the formal gardens
of the scowling rich, the fine gold pollen
sticking to our nakedness like sex on sex,
our own bed filthy and rich beneath
the well-oiled machine of our lovemaking.
**
Self Love
I'm stretching before my walk,
reaching down to touch my toes
when my lips suddenly meet my own
knee, and it feels like two people meeting
in an elevator, say, inexplicably drawn
to each other's mouths, and they fall
to kissing precipitously and without knowing
where this is going or even wanting to know--
sniffing and licking and grazing the tiny
hairs growing in this place that is the articulation
between my femur, tibia, and patella, though I don't
think of it in those terms, the way that two
people kissing in an elevator don't think
of the orphaned vowels shooting out like
sparks all around them as articulation per se,
but think only of drinking in as much fire
as they can before the doors open and they go
walking back out in the world among the walkers.
**
Uncanny
People look like people.
And places look like places.
And everything rhymes a little
and has been said before.
Bob Dylan in his late 60s
looks a lot like my mother.
It's partly the nose,
partly the big hair.
Deja vu is the French I knew
before I knew French.
It's nice to meet you,
I've loved you ever since you were born
and probably longer than that.
Can't ken it, canst thou, Kenneth?
Nope. That shit cannot be taught.
This is the poem I have wished I'd written
ever since I read it.
**
return to sawbuck 3.2
**
Paul Hostovsky's 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. His first full-length collection, Bending the Notes, is available from Main Street Rag. Visit his website at: www.paulhostovsky.com
**
To A Landscaper
You smell like a lawnmower, love.
Come sit your grassy ass down
on the bed. I want to taste the green
sweat spreading like wealth all over
your body, the lawns of the rich and
gasoline commingling on your skin and
bones. I want to feel the suburbs
rub off on us like the laughing poor
streaking through the formal gardens
of the scowling rich, the fine gold pollen
sticking to our nakedness like sex on sex,
our own bed filthy and rich beneath
the well-oiled machine of our lovemaking.
**
Self Love
I'm stretching before my walk,
reaching down to touch my toes
when my lips suddenly meet my own
knee, and it feels like two people meeting
in an elevator, say, inexplicably drawn
to each other's mouths, and they fall
to kissing precipitously and without knowing
where this is going or even wanting to know--
sniffing and licking and grazing the tiny
hairs growing in this place that is the articulation
between my femur, tibia, and patella, though I don't
think of it in those terms, the way that two
people kissing in an elevator don't think
of the orphaned vowels shooting out like
sparks all around them as articulation per se,
but think only of drinking in as much fire
as they can before the doors open and they go
walking back out in the world among the walkers.
**
Uncanny
People look like people.
And places look like places.
And everything rhymes a little
and has been said before.
Bob Dylan in his late 60s
looks a lot like my mother.
It's partly the nose,
partly the big hair.
Deja vu is the French I knew
before I knew French.
It's nice to meet you,
I've loved you ever since you were born
and probably longer than that.
Can't ken it, canst thou, Kenneth?
Nope. That shit cannot be taught.
This is the poem I have wished I'd written
ever since I read it.
**
return to sawbuck 3.2
**
Paul Hostovsky's 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. His first full-length collection, Bending the Notes, is available from Main Street Rag. Visit his website at: www.paulhostovsky.com
Labels: 3.2, paul hostovsky
