Those men with frogs
in their throats, those women
wildly screaming as though
the frogs had gotten out
and were hopping around
all over the stage
always cracked me up
though it made my Aunt Edie
weep, silently to herself,
leaning in closer
to the scratchy old record player,
her head bowed slightly,
her glasses in her hand,
while me and my cousin Michael
were playing cops and robbers
or pirates chasing each other
around and around the turntable
and into the den where
we took turns dying
operatically on the couch,
those men and women keening
with Aunt Edie while we giggled
and bled to death, wriggling
on the floor.
Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. He has kept his day job all these years just in case the poetry thing didn’t work out. He has always liked what Marianne Moore said about poetry: “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”