New poems from Paul Hostovsky

Braille’s Hands

I like the story because it’s true –Thomas Lux

When Braille died, braille
hadn’t caught on yet. The blind students
at L’Institut des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris
loved it, but the teachers and administrators,
most of whom were sighted,
didn’t. Because they couldn’t read it.
“Our blind charges will be taught embossed print,
not braille,” they said. Actually, they didn’t say that,
because braille wasn’t called braille back then.
It was called “Method for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong
by Means of Dots.” At least that’s what Braille called it,
in French, after he’d perfected it. So maybe they said,
“Our blind charges will be taught embossed print,
not those pesky dots that Braille came up with.”
He was a student at the school. And later a teacher.
The dots were a kind of contraband
passed from hand to hand clandestinely
among the students. It wasn’t called braille
until long after his death, when the dots spread
like wildfire, to blind hands all over the world.
That’s when the bigwigs came down from Paris
to the village of Coupvray, where Braille was born,
and where he was buried. They wanted to disinter him,
bring him up to Paris, re-bury him,
with honors reserved for the greatest French minds,
in Le Panthéon. But the village elders
would have none of it. Il reste ici! Back off, bigwigs!
Back and forth went the tug of war over Braille’s remains.
Finally, a compromise: His hands
would remain in the village of Coupvray,
because, after all, it’s the hands of the blind
that read braille. (Leave it to the French
to to cut off the hands of Louis Braille!) The 27 bones
of his hands are buried in the village of Coupvray,
where blind people from all over the world make pilgrimages
to honor him to this day, while the rest of him
is buried in Le Panthéon up in Paris
sans hands.

Newburger

There are hundreds, if not thousands,
of David Newburgers out there
as you will likely discover
if you google David Newburger,
as I did. But there’s only one
who was my friend when we were ten years old
and bunkmates and teammates for a summer,
a boy with dark hair, dark eyes,
a nose that twitched and wiggled a lot
like a rabbit’s—maybe it was a tic,
or maybe it was just allergies. He had this way
of pushing his chest out, or maybe
it was just a barrel chest and he wasn’t
pushing it out. But he was a good
hitter, good shortstop, good sport
and a good friend. And I went looking for him
online for no other reason than
it had been fifty years or more
and it would be magical, wouldn’t it,
to find him. I found him. He’s bald now—
the dark hair all gone—but that chest
and that nose. Those eyes. I did the age progression
in my head. It had to be him.
And it was, I know, because I pinged him
and asked him if it was him, and he replied
that it was, and how the hell are ya LOL it’s been 4ever.
I wrote to him then, several long paragraphs
of memories that felt magical to me
and that I wanted to share. But he didn’t write back.
And he still hasn’t written back. I’m disappointed
but I get it. He obviously doesn’t believe
in magic. But I still do. Look how I can conjure him
as a ten-year old with a twitching rabbit nose
just like that. Newburger out of a hat.

Wrench

I threw my back out.
And now I can’t do anything
but lie here and think about
the pain, and also the phrase
I threw my back out, whose
figurative use sounds absurdly
literal, and has now become
my standard pathetic response
to every single How are you?
I’m in pain is how I am,
and the more I think about it,
the more I think the pain
has its several uses, too. A kind of
memento, it says: Remember
there is pain in the world,
do not turn away from it.
So it’s also a kind of tool.
The way a wrench is a tool.
Applying torque, forcing
a turn. Maybe what I should say is,
I wrenched my back, instead of
I threw out my back, is what
I’m thinking now, lying here in
pain, nothing to do but turn
the words over and over in my head.

Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and braille instructor. His poems and essays appear widely online and in print. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Only Poems, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. His latest book, Perfect Disappearances (2025), has been shortlisted for a Massachusetts Book Award. Website: paulhostovsky.com