You know but
you would forget.
You are happiest
when you have forgotten.
But no amount of
forgetting can make you
not know. Knowing is
like the suicide hanging
on the edge of the birthday party,
swollen blue tongue among
the noisemakers and
conical hats. Forgetting
is like walking around
and around in the world
blindfolded, hearing
the laughter, holding your
severed life in your hands—
trying to put it back.
One hurt person
hurts three people:
that's one hurt person cubed,
each one now
an exponent of hurt,
a conscript turned
recruiter, the power of hurt
written across his
psyche and his T-shirt.
Do the math: the numbers
are staggering while
marching in perfect
formation, a military
band accompanying them
all the way to infinity.
What disgusts us
is us. We disgust our-
selves. Our cells
are not what our
selves want to be
smelling especially,
sloughing east and west,
secreting north and south.
Take a good look
in the mirror—the eye
taking itself in.
The wet and bulging
tenuous attachment.
The red and rooted
scream of it.
Paul Hostovsky is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Hurt Into Beauty (2012, FutureCycle Press). His fifth collection, Naming Names, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in 2014. His poems have won a Pushcart Prize and two Best of the Net awards. Visit him at www.paulhostovky.com
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2014
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