Two Poems by Paul Hostovsky

The Debate at Duffy's                                                                                             

She said that sex was a yearning of the soul.
He said it was a very compelling argument
of the body, a compulsion. She said it was
a spiritual compulsion. He said it was nothing
if not carnal, carni, meat. This conversation
took place in a bar. The background music was
so loud it was in the foreground. The bodies
on the dance floor were moving in ways that
would interest even the dead if they could only
remember how to live. There was a baseball game
playing on television. On the table were two
empty glasses, and the bottle's green phallus
which she took in her hand and pulled toward her,
pulling him toward her as she poured them both
another drink. He drank deeply, felt the spirit
filling his cup. Then he looked into her eyes and saw
that she was beautiful, sexy, and at the bottom
of the 9th, suddenly, surprisingly, irrevocably, right.



To a Landscaper                                                                                                  

You smell like a lawnmower, love.
Come sit your grassy ass down
on the bed. I want to taste the green
sweat spreading like wealth all over
your body, the lawns of the rich and
gasoline commingling on your skin and
bones. I want to feel the suburbs
rub off on us like the laughing poor
streaking through the formal gardens
of the scowling rich, the fine gold pollen
sticking to our nakedness like sex on sex,
our own bed filthy and rich beneath
the well-oiled machine of our lovemaking.