“price check” by Paul Hostovsky

I think the price of sugar should go up
to reflect the irreplaceable
place of sweetness in the dark
world. I mean look
around. The ice is melting into everything and the levels
of pain are rising worldwide with alarming
silence seeping into everything
and it has a vaguely metal taste we seem
to recognize though we never
tasted it till now. I’m telling you
a pound of premium pure cane
granulated sugar in a box
is holy,
yet it’s only $1.89. I mean shame
on you who know in your heart
and soul, in your kidneys and on
your tongue you would give anything,
do anything, pay any price for a little more
of this ore, this wealth spreading like
love all around the bowl of
oatmeal of the world.

 
Paul Hostovsky, has long and generously contributed poetry to r.kv.r.y.  His poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac; and published in Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, and many other journals and anthologies. He won the Comstock Review‘s Muriel Craft Bailey Award in 2001, as well as chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, and Split Oak Press. He has two full-length poetry collections, Bending the Notes (2008), and Dear Truth (2009), both from Main Street Rag. Paul’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 13 times, and won one once. He makes his living in Boston as an interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing where he specializes in working with the deaf-blind.

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