Paul Hostovsky

The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces and I hate a slobbering dog. All this mucus and affection is making me sick, not to mention the ejaculations of the junipers, oaks, alders and maples–I can’t stop sneezing and I’m all congested. The erectile tail feathers of the wild turkeys–the way the males display them

“Leave it to the Germans,” said Ben.
“They didn’t invent it,” I said. “They just named it.”
“To name a thing is to own it,” he said. “It’s theirs.”

If a man falls to his knees in a forest
and there’s nobody there to hear
his soft weeping …