Homegoing
And what if dying is like
that time I got out of school early
because I had an appointment
and I pushed open the heavy doors
and walked out into the day
and it was a beautiful spring day
or a late winter day that smelled like spring
and if it was fall it was early fall
when it’s all but technically summer
and there was a whole world going on out there
and it had been going on out there the whole time
that I was stuck inside with time
and teachers and rules and equations and parsed sentences
but now here I was among the tribe
of the free and I could go this way or I could go that way
or I could just sit down right here on this bench
and look around at all the freedom
that was mine and also the work crew’s
breaking for lunch beneath their ladders and also the woman’s
pushing her stroller along the sidewalk and also the man’s
walking his small dog and smoking a cigarette
and it belonged to the cars whooshing by with a sound like
the wind in the trees and the wind in my hair
and the wind all around me and inside me
and also above me chasing the clouds running free
and suddenly there was my mother
looking somehow a little different
in all her freedom and all my freedom
until she rolled down her window and waved
to come—now—hurry
because I had an appointment
which felt like a real buzzkill
and I briefly considered turning around
and walking away from her
and going off on my own somewhere
to be alone and free for a little longer
or maybe for forever
but then I realized there was nowhere for me to go
except home
Striptease at the Ars Poetica
First I took off my coat
because I was hot
and then I took off my hat
because forty percent of your body heat is lost through your head
which is a myth
but I like certain mythologies
and I like certain hat hair
which is perverse I know but I’m kind of a perv
so I took off my scarf because it was itchy
and then I took off my gloves
because it’s hard to unbutton your shirt when you’re wearing gloves
and I wanted to unbutton my shirt
so I unbuttoned my shirt
and I took it off and twirled it around over my head
and tossed it through the air
the way they do in strip joints and in movies
and at weddings
okay maybe they don’t do that at weddings
they toss bouquets at weddings
and they twirl napkins at weddings
but you get the idea
and when I got the idea I took off my pants
because when a man gets aroused
he has this inexorable compulsion
to show his erection to someone who appreciates it
the way he appreciates it
as though it were something he had made
with his own hands
which some erections are
so then I stood there steeply rocking
in a sea of aloneness
because I was utterly alone in the Ars Poetica
with no one to appreciate what I had made
so I took off my shoes and my socks
and I hung my left sock on my erection
like a windsock
that shows the direction and strength of the wind
I didn’t make the wind but I made a windsock
or the likeness or the image of a windsock
and I stood there naked in the wind for a brief moment
admiring what I had made
because it was beautiful and true and it slanted a little
due to the diminishing strength of my erection
and all of a sudden I felt very foolish
all of a sudden I felt very cold
and alone and with no direction
so I removed the sock and I put it back on my foot
and I put my other sock on my other foot
and I dressed quickly and self-consciously
and stuffed my hat and scarf and gloves back inside my coat pockets
and then with my coat in one hand and my shoes in the other
I tiptoed out of there in my stockinged feet
and I only am escaped alone to tell thee
To My 8th Grade Typing Teacher
Because I am a writer who can’t write
in longhand, and because my fingers
are always itching for the keyboard, my silent
piano, and because writing, for me, has always been
more like making music anyway
than having anything to say,
I am writing to say thank you, Miss Statchel,
wherever you are, for teaching me how to type in the 8th grade,
back when I was a cross between
a suppurating pimple with sensory organs on it
and a stomach lurching queasily down a junior
high school hallway. You saved my life,
which sounds hyperbolic, I know, but hey,
as the bumper sticker says, Art Saves Lives,
and I think I can safely say
that typing is the one skill I learned in junior high
that has stood me in good stead, a phrase
that’s been around since the 15th century,
which is an etymological factoid as useless
as all the facts and dates and definitions
we memorized in junior high. But I remember
your classroom, Miss Statchel, a manual typewriter bolted
to every desk, and Linda Farrell sitting demurely
in the desk next to mine. I might have
fallen in love with her if I didn’t
fall in love with typing first: a quirky, QWERTY
love of all the letters, and all the words,
with lots of touching with all my fingers,
except the thumbs–the right thumb making space
while the fingers made time with the letters,
the left thumb hovering over everything, looking on. I wonder
about that left thumb, why its fate is to be forever
left out, left over, like a maiden aunt, perhaps a little
like you, Miss Statchel, lonely, rigid, watchful, chaperoning
the fingers as they make love to the letters and the words—
yet never joining in the joy of the consummation.
✶✶✶✶
Paul Hostovsky is the author of thirteen books of poetry and six poetry chapbooks. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter.
✶
Whenever possible, we link book titles to Bookshop, an independent bookselling site. As a Bookshop affiliate, Another Chicago Magazine earns a small percentage from qualifying purchases.
Another Chicago Magazine 