 |
AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
The day Trump takes office
I’m quitting sugar
to protest the irreplaceable
place of sweetness in the dark
world. I mean look
around. The ice is melting into everything and the levels
of pain are rising worldwide with alarming
silence seeping into everything
and there’s nothing
I can do about it. I need
to do something about it. I’m quitting
sugar as an act of solidarity,
a way to keep the sweetness
holy. Kind of like the sabbath, only
secular. Kind of like a hunger strike, only
healthier. Of course the symbolism
will be lost on Trump, whose own
blood sugar levels are a state
secret—if it weren’t
lost on Trump he probably wouldn't
have won. Hell, he wouldn’t have
run in the first place if he understood
the irreplaceable, unimpeachable,
inexpressible place of sweetness
in the dark world, which is growing
darker and more bitter apace,
and is just as irreplaceable as it ever was.
Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net. He has been published in Poetry, Passages North, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, The Sun, and many other journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart Prize, the Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Award, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. Paul has thirteen full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Pitching for the Apostates (2023). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. He lives with his wife Marlene in Medfield, Massachusetts.
