THAT

That

By Paul Hostovsky

After that he lost his sense of humor.

It wasn't that nothing was funny.

It was just that that wasn't funny.

It was just that. That and a world that

could allow that to happen. Nothing

funny in the world after that;

Before that everything funny in the world was only funny

because that hadn't happened yet. And yet

it had happened. And it had been happening

in the world ever since the world had begun. 

How to reconcile that was the question? 

How in the world to laugh with that in the world? 

That was the riddle, the conundrum 

whose answer was once a clever pun, 

but now was just this bruised silence, this 

dumb twitching, this tongue cut right out.