by Paul Hostovsky
We were talking about chickens and I said,
How did we get onto chickens?
And you said, Why do you always do that?
And I said, Do what? And you said,
Why do you always want to go back
in the conversation and retrace
your steps? And I said, Because I’m curious
about how I got here. And you said, Why not
just be here now? And I said, Because
Ram Dass already wrote that book. I want to write
a different book. Maybe I’ll call it Let’s Go Back
or Chicken or Egg. You didn’t know
what to say to that, so you didn’t say anything,
you just got up and walked out of the room
without saying where you were going or why
you were leaving. And I thought to myself,
How did I end up with someone so incurious
and so different from myself?
Paul Hostovsky’s latest book of poems is Perfect Disappearances (Kelsay, 2025). He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, 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.