Five Fingers Review

Paul Hoover
From Edge and Fold

xxxvi

impossible leaflets
are dropped from a plane

and now the town scatters
beneath information

clutter at the crossing
every eye dark

from all it doesn’t see
attention alters being

and being disappears
what a town

and who named it
every object poses—

chair and its shadow—
as what they only are

xxxix

in China the word
for picture

consists of two windows
both completely empty

a perfect transparency
is nothing at all

concealed by its brightness
subtle in its grandeur

Paul Hoover has published nine poetry collections including Winter (Mirror) and Rehearsal in Black. He is editor of Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994) and, with Maxine Chernoff, the literary magazine New American Writing.

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