Paul Hoover Poems

Simple things like bread,
you can't even think about them.

The lesson of skin touching skin,
...

I shall never reach Danville, Ohio,
Danville distant and lonely.

Black car, small moon,
in the back seat beer.
...

"All these things the creator told me in Alabama."
—Sun Ra


Mariposa, what a clean word is that!
...

Don't kill yourself, Paul.
The world is angry for only a moment
and then it loves you again.
Even its perfect indifference
is love and no love in equal doses.
...

"I take away my hand, which writes and speaks much."
—Jaime Sabines


I take away my mouth,
...

This is the evening when a bird nests in a hat
left in the street by a flying man, a man of worlds and heat, of vellum and fog
and sculptures that lurk when we're not looking, this is the evening.
...