BELATED INAUGURAL POEM

by Paul Hostovsky

Bumptious was Wednesday’s
Webster’s Word of the Day,
and because it kind of rhymes 
with the guy in the White House
and because it’s the perfect word
for what he is—rudely and noisily 
overconfident and over-assertive—
and because it comes from bump 
and the suffix -tious, which gives us
other apposite modifiers such as
captious and fractious, which also
perfectly describe this guy for whom
no one was inspired to write an inaugural poem—
neither the first time around nor the second—
and because the opposite of bumptious 
is humble, a word that is not in his vocabulary, 
and finally, because better late than never, 
I offer you this belated poem on the occasion 
of the inauguration of the bumptious dick
(which is a perfect example of synecdoche, i.e.
that part of him representing the whole of him)
who does not represent me, who does not represent 
anyone I know or love, who does not represent
anything I believe in—which is not only a fact,
a true fact, but a good example of anaphora.


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.

TRUMP INAUGURAL

by Paul Hostovsky

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.

MY SYMPTOMS APPROACHING ELECTION DAY

by Paul Hostovsky

I’m shaking my head all the time

and it looks like a tremor, it looks like

Parkinson’s. But in fact it’s negation.

It’s: No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

It’s disbelief and disapproval,

refusal to accept what’s unacceptable,

what’s so unspeakable I can only

cover my mouth and wonder how such people

can think such things. It’s unthinkable,

yet we who think it’s unthinkable

could very well be in the minority. I shake

my head and cover my mouth

and groan. Are you sick? a man asks me

at the post office. Here, take this.

And he hands me a red tote bag 

with MAGA emblazoned on both sides. No 

thank you! I say, and vomit directly into it,

cover my mouth, and shake my head

and leave him there holding the bag.

AI-generated graphic from Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

SEND THEM BACK

by Paul Hostovsky

Yes, let’s all go back

to where we all came from—

all of us—a few hundred thousand years ago,

back to the Great Rift Valley in Africa

where Mitochondrial Eve 

first opened her skirts 

and had enough daughters in a continuous chain

for her mitochondrial DNA 

to survive. Let’s all go back, every last one of us,

by foot or by boat–whichever way we 

came—no cars, trains, airplanes—

those of us who left

reuniting with those who never left. Plenty

of room now for all of us 

in the vast network of valleys 

that stretches between the Red Sea and Mozambique

where the giant rift is slowly tearing apart–

the Nubian tectonic plate

and the Somalian tectonic plate 

ever so slowly pulling apart, and at the same time

separating from the Arabian plate in the north. 

Let’s meet in Ethiopia where the three plates meet.

And though it will take us all a long time

to get there—8 billion of us and counting—

that’s okay because it will take a long time

for the fractures in the earth’s crust

to open up completely and form

a new ocean. But when they do

we will all be there. And then let's

all line up and hold hands

and go jump in a lake

together.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

A SLAP IN THE FACE

by Paul Hostovsky

One man slaps another
as hard as he can in the face.
A third runs up with a microphone
and asks the slapped man
how it feels to be slapped in the face.
And it feels like a slap in the face,
which the man begins to say but then
starts weeping, and his words
trail off as the camera goes in
for a close-up of the wet glisten
in the eyes of the weeping man.
How does it feel to be weeping? 
asks the man with the microphone 
while we sit at home and watch 
and weep for the weeping man
and rage at the man who slapped him,
who is standing somewhere off-camera
waiting for his turn to be asked
why he did the slapping and how
it felt and please pass the popcorn 
because as it turns out the man 
who slapped the slapped man 
is a slapped man himself, and though
he isn’t weeping now, we can feel ourselves 
feeling for the unweeping man who slapped 
the weeping slapped man who has just
slapped the man with the microphone—
and though we really can’t blame him,
we do blame him, and we don't blame
ourselves, and we keep on chewing.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

BIDEN’S AGE

by Paul Hostovsky

Of course it’s a concern.

I, for one, would like to hear him talk about it

more candidly, 

the constipation, for example, 

and whether he uses Benefiber or Metamucil

or Miralax, or is that a state 

secret? I’d like to know how long 

on average he sits on the john

before there’s any movement 

on the southern front, 

and whether he writes any speeches 

in that attitude, that pose like Rodin’s Penseur 

sur la toilette. Because I myself

have sat on the john for an eternity 

without making any headway

but I get some of my best ideas there,

this one, for example, about Biden’s age

and my desire as a Democrat

for my president to be more forthcoming

about the daily indignities of the old, 

such as constipation, an indignity it isn’t dignified

or presidential to talk about in public perhaps,

but if he did talk about it he’d get my vote,

and possibly the votes of more than a few

Republicans. Because look at Trump–

I mean the guy is full of shit 

but he won’t admit it. I think if Biden 

admitted it, he’d have a good chance 

of winning the race 

and maybe get the runs

which would really turn things around.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

ESCAPE

by Paul Hostovsky

He crab-walked up and out of there
and I can’t help admiring him a little for that

especially since they keep replaying it on TV 
and thousands of cops are combing Pennsylvania 

and they haven’t found him yet. And I can’t help
rooting for him a little as though he were

the underdog, and not a killer who stabbed
his girlfriend to death in front of her children.

My God. They will never get over that. Have you
ever found yourself rooting for the wrong 

side? Crab-walking is moving sort of sideways
and diagonally in an awkward, furtive manner. 

Please pass the popcorn. I wonder if they’ll ever
find him. Voyeurism is sort of furtively taking

pleasure in disaster, catastrophe, pain, and without
ever feeling the pain, or ever getting caught.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

RUBIALES KISS

by Paul Hostovsky

They call it football because
you can only use your feet.

Though sometimes you can also use 
your head, your chest, your legs.

But you can’t use your hands.
And you can’t use your arms. 

Those are the rules.

They call it a kiss on the mouth because
it’s a kiss on the mouth.

You can only kiss the mouth of someone 
with whom you are intimate. 

A lover. A spouse. 
Sometimes also family.

Use your head. 

That’s the rule. 
In all countries and in all languages. 

True, it is an unwritten rule,
but that’s no excuse for breaking it.

And now that you’ve broken it, Luis,
now that you’re flaunting it 

and famously showing your contempt for it, 

you can be sure the rule 
will get written down after this.

And though you probably won’t end up
in jail, you just may end up 

giving your name to this kind of unwanted kiss. 
Even without your consent. 

Because that’s the rule with eponyms.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

NOT QUITE SYNONYMS

by Paul Hostovsky

The name-sign for Ron DeSantis
in American Sign Language
is exactly the same as the sign 
for Satan, according to my deaf
informants at the Florida School
for the Deaf and the Blind
in St. Augustine. The etymology
of that name-sign may have something to do
with the visual similarity (deaf people 
are intensely visual, after all) between 
the letters in Satan and the letters in Santis, 
or it may have something to do 
with the similarity of their policies–
for example, their shared affinity
for burning, and also their preference
for darkness and the benighted 
over the light of day and the being fully 
awake. Bottom line, if you ever happen
to eavesdrop on some deaf people 
animatedly signing about Ron DeSantis,
it would be a forgivable and understandable mistake
if you thought they were talking about Satan,
because although they're not quite synonyms
they are unmistakably homonyms in ASL.

Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. His newest book of poems is Pitching for the Apostates (forthcoming, Kelsay Books).