by Paul Hostovsky
I don’t think
you should put all your eggs
in one basket, is all
I’m saying, I said.
Easy for you to say,
you said, now that
you rule the roost
and your eggs are all golden.
Detecting more
than a little resentment
on your part, I reread
the chicken scratch
of the proposal
on the table. I’m not one
to walk on eggshells: Listen,
I said, you’re no spring
chicken is all I’m saying.
You gave me such a
reptilian look then,
it gave me goosebumps.
Well aren’t we the mother
hen all high and mighty at the top
of the pecking order? you squawked,
glared, knocked over your chair,
and flew the coop.
Paul Hostovsky‘s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (ta-da!) and have recently been sighted in places where they pay you for your trouble with your own trouble doubled, and other people’s troubles thrown in, which never seem to him as great as his troubles, though he tries not to compare. He has no life and spends it with his poems, trying to perfect their perfect disappearances.