O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Paul Hostovsky
DEAR EDVARD MUNCH
We love a good scream.
And we’d like to put yours
to music with a video
option (contract enclosed).
Pain is in, especially pain in
tune, and the gravelly voice
of our own wretchedness
broadcast back to us
is beautiful to our modern
way of thinking. We were thinking
Mick Jagger, maybe Springsteen,
Tina Turner if the figure on the bridge
is female (please advise). The baldness
is brilliant, Edvard, brilliant—
baldness is in, and we love it
as much as we love the bloody sky,
the oozing lake and rolling precipice
(blood and ooze and rock and roll
are in) and we would only lower
one hand (the irony will not be lost
on the grandmothers) and it could be
either hand, your choice, the other
remaining at the ear the way you have it—
And lo! The scream turns into
song, the sexless figure turns
into the sexy recording artist
with a hand cupped to one ear,
the mouth unchanged in the center,
like the eye of the cyclone
which is raging all around in a black
chorus. Sign in the lower
right-hand corner
and fed-ex back to us.
About the writer:
Paul Hostovsky‘s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (ta-da!). He has no life and spends it with his poems, trying to perfect their perfect disappearances.
Image: Song of the Terrible Angels (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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O:JA&L’S BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
Click on the titles below to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks in the O:JA&L Masters Series.
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Tom Hazuka on Flash Fiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Kent Dixon on Flash Fiction & Nonfiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
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