#paul hostovsky

Coconut Paul Hostovsky

Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it's hard to get at but the thing is I wasn't looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn't happy I said to put it back because I didn't want it because we didn't need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got it home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it

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Also: + Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek + Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje + This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss + Will You?, Carrie Fountain

Crack open the past:

That Light

of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of

I think I knew you when we were children,

this look of I’ve loved you ever since you were born

and probably longer than that... "

by Paul Hostovsky

and all the natural resources like words,

then the world would be

an unambiguously better place.

Because when you use a word

like apocalypse, say, it doesn't then follow

that there is one less apocalypse to go around––

there are still an infinite number of apocalypses,

more than enough for everyone. And the more

people who use a language the more

the language grows rich and strong

and resourceful and ramifying

with new and far-out ways of saying things,

not to mention all the lexical borrowings that go on,

the exotic words and phrases, and the names––

names of dinosaurs and flowers

and racehorses and hurricanes––

and the lists, praise be to God for the lists!

Which is just the opposite of the world

with its dying rivers and dwindling resources

and endangered species list.

With words you can make stuff up out of nothing

which is more than you can say

for physics or chemistry or corn. Earth’s

the right place for language. I don't know where

else you could invent an imaginary escape hatch

up and out of a dying world,

and take a little of the world with you in your pockets,

like the jingling coins of a realm,

or like the crepitating bits and pieces

of a beautiful intact dead language

for sprinkling over the smart lunch conversation