A poem should have

at least one good list—

anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous?

A poem should be

suspicious

as a package you might put

into the hands of

unsuspecting others.

Can you be trusted?

Can they be trusted?

You can receive a thing

without opening it.

You can reject a thing

without opening it. You can

read a poem by holding it up to the light,

holding it up to your ear

and giving it a shake

to see what shifts. You can

even walk away from it

and come back to it later

to see if it has changed

you, opened you. Oh my

bearer of rectangles,

if I could tell you

how to tell the pure

money of the poems

from all the other rectangles

in your little square truck

with its picture of flight

on both flanks,

if I could show you

how to feel it

through the envelope,

like a braille letter,

like someone else’s

goose bumps in your hands,

worth its weight in

transport of a kind I cannot

teach you how to make your own,

though you steal it,

though you open every

letter, oh my poor

letter carrier, rich already

with the handling of it,

though you look for it in all

four corners

of its own sumptuous

destitute world

which is thinner than paper,

which is air itself,

air from the country

of someone else’s

mouth, oh my beautiful

mailman, I would,

I would.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: paulhostovsky.com