Commandment

By Paul Hostovsky

You gotta love
all your little hatreds,
all your petty
annoyances (annoy
from the Latin odium),
for they have been
around since before Latin,
Old Italic, Etruscan,
Phoenician, Hebrew and every
other tongue—your little
hatreds have been
spitting on the earth
since the second fish
who walked on land
trod on the heels of the first,
and probably got into it
with the third fish, too.
There is such a rich
tradition of resentment,
grudge and kerfuffle—
and kerfuffle is such
a great word, you gotta
love it. You gotta love
your neighbor as yourself,
but if your neighbor is
irritating, try loving
all your irritations, try
getting in touch with
the oneness of their long
branching history, whose
latest leafy unclenching
florid blossom you are.
It’s a numinous work-around
and you gotta love it.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (Voila!), 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, which is the working title of his new collection, which is looking for a publisher and for itself. He is the recipient of such rebukes as You Never Want To Do Anything and All You Care About Are Your Stupid Clever Poems. Mostly (2021) is his most recent book. You can find him on his website at paulhostovsky.com.

Why we chose this piece: Paul’s wry yet earnest voice resonated with us a lot, and we love how he took such a deep dive into what’s normally an unhelpful religious cliche. And he’s right—kerfuffle is a great word.