Driving to Work with Britney Spears

I don’t care what anyone says,

I’ve had to pee so bad in traffic

I’ve pulled over in the breakdown lane

where the courtships of small animals go on

in the ravines. I’ve been so full of shit

I’ve had to turn the radio on

just to drown me out. But I like

her voice. I like her signature

low note, that guttural thing she does

that sounds like pushing. Like she’s

climbed down into a ravine and she’s squatting

there among the animals, pushing.

It could be a bowel movement. It could be

a baby. It could be a second baby. Baby, baby,

it’s very effective, whatever it is, and I don’t

care what you think because I’m happy

singing along on my way to work,

my thumbs keeping time on my steering wheel,

my head full of bullshit and beauty and Britney

Spears pushing and singing and making babies.

What They Did to Those People

When we heard what they did to those people we

imagined ourselves in their place at first those people

to whom it was done those poor frightened people

who probably didn’t believe it at first when they heard

it was being done to them and oh my god the children

who didn’t know that people could do such things

and have always done such things but when we tried

to imagine how people could do such things we couldn’t

we couldn’t imagine it couldn’t imagine ourselves

in their place at all those people who did those things

because we believe that we could never do those things

we who teach our children to love all people including

such people as would do such things to us who imagine

we are different from such people who do such things

Perfect Forgiveness

He left his wife and threw his back out

packing books and clothes into his Toyota

and drove in hybrid pain to his Aunt Edie’s

who lived with her dementia in a house in Easton

and stayed with her for a month and everyday

she was pleasantly surprised to see him

and asked him what he did to his back

and asked him what he did to his marriage

and the repetition was good for him and good

for her because she couldn’t remember and he

couldn’t forget as the days passed and his

loneliness and pain increased so they sat

together at her kitchen table and she listened

as he told the painful story again and again

and each time he told it a little different

and each time she heard it for the first time

and shook her head at the same sad and truly

unforgivable parts which were all true

and took his plate to the sink and promptly forgot

took his plate and washed it completely clean

Paul Hostovsky's poems appear widely online and in print. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Writer's Almanac. He has two poetry chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson Books, 2006) and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press, 2006). He works in Boston as an interpreter for the deaf.