Paul Hostovsky

Letters from Camp

I’ve been reading the letters I wrote to my mother
over fifty years ago from camp–she saved
them all. When she died I found them
in a shoe box in my 9-year-old hand and
voice. A hand so loopy and innocent I could
weep. A voice I know like the back
of a very small hand that used to be mine
 
and somehow still is. The recurring theme
is winning (“We won the baseball game, I hit
a homer.” “We won the swim meet.” “We lost
the tenis tornamint because it was windy and the ball
didn’t go where we hit it.”) And also sugar (“Send
more candy.” “We had fribbles from Friendly's.”
“Dinner was pizza and coke and desert was
choclit cake. The coke and cake were yumy.”)
 
Winning and sugar. Sugar and winning.
And it occurs to me, though the letters stopped,
the same themes continued for fifty years: winning
at school, winning in romance, winning at work, always
the need to kill it, to destroy the competition. The sugar
that was alcohol, the sugar that was sex, the sweet taste
of every conquest. How despicable I suddenly am
to myself. Only the misspellings are endearing,
those phonetic, understandable, forgivable mistakes.



Hospital Gift Shop
 
I come here looking for something for you
among the colorful, breakable things
presided over by an elderly volunteer
who looks up brightly from her book,
then goes back to reading
as I sniff around for something
like food–not food but something
like food to take upstairs to you,
something pithy and buoyant
and wooden and old like a good walking stick,
a long stout pole with a beautiful
twist at the end for carrying around
when walking in quicksand country–I want
to ask the woman reading if she carries
something like that. Who knows,
maybe she keeps it stashed away
in a box on a high shelf in the back like
hope. But I don’t ask. Instead I finger the spines
of the paperbacks, looking for a book for you
that isn’t here, or anywhere–a book
whose old, damp, faintly sweet
bad-tooth breath you smell when you open
its crackling stained pages and read
that death is benign as a library fine
waived by a beautiful librarian
who asks you if the story of the body
pleased, then asks you if you’d like
to exchange it for another story
or give the stories up. Give up all the stories–
I want to ask the woman reading if she carries
such a book. But I don’t ask. Instead I give you
this woman in the gift shop quietly reading.
 


Howard in Heaven
 
I hear licking
coming from
the bathroom.
 
It’s my cat
Howard
in the shower
after I have
 
showered,
the damp
hanging there
 
rich as
a rainforest
after a rain,
so thick you could
 
drink it,
which Howard is
doing
in delicate
 
little sips,
licking the tiles,
nipping the droplets
clinging there
 
with the quick
pink arrow
of his tongue,
 
and it sounds
downright
delicious.



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). Website: paulhostovsky.com