“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.”
And he walked away then,
waving goodbye with his
back to me, airily, triumphantly, the argument
won, the conversation over as
far as he was concerned. Though I don’t
dislike Ben exactly, nor envy him his
wife or Ph.D., which is in poetry—
the wife very pretty, beautiful even—when
a month later he tells me she told him she wants
out, I can’t help feeling—not joy
exactly, I wouldn’t call it Freude—
not the sort of feeling you’d write an ode to,
but more the sort you might
write a dark little conversational piece
in quatrains about—
just to say the conversation isn’t over
until it’s over.
Paul Hostovsky’s latest book of poetry is Late for the Gratitude Meeting (Kelsay Books, 2019). His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and Braille instructor.
