Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Paul Hostovsky’s poem “Passage” as our second monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 11: Winter 2026. You can find more poetry in his book, Perfect Disappearances, available from Kelsay Books.
Passage
The book I’m reading now my mother read
and loved. You can get this close to the dead
and no closer. I like to imagine her smiling
or sighing over this passage, the marginalia
like lichen on a stone between the name and dates
and words from scripture. Her face is frozen now,
inanimate as the verdigris-covered headstones
in the cemetery I never visit because she isn’t
there. She’s here, in this book she loved—I can almost
see her gaze on the page, a faint patina covering
everything. I wonder what she said about this book
when she got to the last sentence. And if there was anyone there
to listen. I wasn’t. There. And I wasn’t listening. Away
at college, I wasn’t reading much either, though I was allegedly
majoring in English literature. Mostly I was drinking
and smoking and making love or trying to, and feeling
motherless and existential. When she called I talked little, half
listening, scribbling on the wall beside the payphone.
(This poem was first published by Acumen.)
About the Poem
Well, let’s see. What to say about this poem? I’m told I have up to 200 words. That’s more than the poem itself. And now I’ve already used up… 29. I’ll just say this. My mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. She was only 63. I’d wasted precious time, in the process of ‘individuating’ as a young adult, pushing her away, keeping her at arm’s length. And now she was gone. She was a reader. She loved books and taught me to love them, too. When I left for college, she was all alone—I’m an only child, my father died when I was 14 and she never remarried. When she’d call me on the weekends, I was high half the time, impatient with her, and unforthcoming. It’s one of my greatest regrets. The tears well up just thinking about it. I didn’t grieve her properly. I’m grieving her now.
Author Bio
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 five chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, Frank Cat Press, Split Oak Press, and Sport Literate. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Your Daily Poem, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and braille instructor. Perfect Disappearances is his fourteenth full-length collection.
From Perfect Disappearances
“These poems have a warmth and unfussy plainspokenness that feels increasingly rare these days. They often feel more like short stories than poems, and yet they very much are poems. In a way, they get the best of both worlds: the ability to tell stories, while free of the constraints of prose fiction. The movement and gestures are lyrical, the pressures are the pressures of poems, with the same elastic ability to move through implication rather than plot.” —Joshua Mensch
Available now: Kelsay Books
Contents
“Managing [my husband’s] pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable…The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.” Read five poems by Amy Riddell, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Reading the Body.”
Chapbook Poem: Aphasia by Robert Allen
“Ultimately this is a poem of love and recognition, of finding the right words for the right listener, to the one who listens and understands.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2026, “Aphasia,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Egg of Anything by Paula Bohince
“The poem is filled with moments of ‘O’ sounds and ‘Ah’ sounds, mimicking the O of the egg and the Ah of the open jaw. I like that the poem is compact in its little form, also a bit egg-like.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2026, “The Egg of Anything” from A Violence by Paula Bohince, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Abraham Aondoana
“Instead of providing any solution to the issue, the poem is ready to be open to the ambiguity that can enable doubt, tenderness, and resilience to co-exist. By so doing, it points to survival not as victory, but as endurance…” Read three poems by Abraham Aondoana, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Surviving a Country That is Also a Question.”
Five Poems by Colleen S. Harris
“I am always struck by the juxtaposition of the biology and science of illness versus the life of the person living with it, and how those two spheres constantly interrupt and flow into each other.” Read five poems by Colleen S. Harris, our third biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Inflammation As Girl.”
Chapbook Poem: Offering by Richard Jordan
“In my mind, the narrator recognizes that Harper’s fate could very well have been his own, and I hope that readers can relate, in the sense that we all have done reckless things, especially in our youth…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Offering,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Passage by Paul Hostovsky
“When she’d call me on the weekends, I was high half the time, impatient with her, and unforthcoming. It’s one of my greatest regrets. The tears well up just thinking about it. I didn’t grieve her properly. I’m grieving her now.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Passage” from Perfect Disappearances by Paul Hostovsky, along with a few words from the poet.
“The poem captures us both there in the dreaded check up appointment: me clenching crinkling paper, scared of what the lab reports say; him…lab reports in hand like some mysterious document…” Read three poems by Mary Whitlow, our fourth biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Examined.”