RECESS

astonish wonder surprise
First Grade:
She taught me shoe tying
in the cloak room
amid galoshes and mittens
without knowing her words
asking politely, "please do it."
The playground fingers pointing
ever after.
Fifth Grade:
How do you keep warm
with the wind like a devil
under your dress on the playground?
Tell me, I plead, but I am told "NO!":
Some questions have secrets not answers.
"Why don't you go play with the boys?"
How will I be a man without knowing?
Eighth Grade:
This will warm your hands;
the blood will flow; recess
will live with you, forever.

CLEANING HOUSE

I was cleaning a room and absentmindedly approached
the sofa. I could not remember whether I had dusted it.
Unfamiliar sounds as if from outside
entered the room as I dusted it
and overthrew the mundane business I was about.
Rebi had said that it happened
to others many times before, but I doubted.
I was alongside the road at the edge
outside the district market village
but could not remember its name
could not decipher the faces of others
the same I had seen before when I was
a child young in my bed with wheat for my blanket
and the Milky Way spread over my face
in a field alongside the road in some strange place
where I slept and at the moment when I slept
I dreamed husband and home and cleaning rooms
absentmindedly and as I approached this place
I could not remember the walls of the house.
Unfamiliar sounds as if from outside
suddenly entered the dream. I was dusting.
Rebi said, "Get about your business; Forget."
Forget what? Forget about dusting?

WINGED CATTLE (OBJECT #684 )

Political problems of the heart.
The automobile soul of humanity.
The backseat propagation of our faith.
we become slowly what we haven't read
the butchers' chant, the village lingam,
a mother's universe
miserable
in every country, deliver us
from
the cave cradle chalice cross coffin
the tomb the taper the transfiguration
of the soul
pantyhose
binding zippers
lockdown girdles
poodle skirts
angora sweaters.
Jacob struggles with angels
in pastures outside suburbs
incapable of mounting the ladder.
The alchemy of fondling--
American Artifacts--
30 objects representative of varied cultures,
Several in mottled colors. Each exquisite and unique.
In the Smithsonian
a collection of rubbers
against northern slush
and southern rains
the misogynations
of our youth
who in their fanciful wagons
guzzling fuel and thought
Here. Over its blue ridges
its purpled mounted majesty
wanders a tribe of victims.

John Horvath

An Hungarian-American born in Chicago, John Horvath Jr was educated (PhD) in the American South; He has been a steel mill mechanic, a soldier, a street poet in Munich, a cab driver, professor of literature and criticism. Disabled in a parachute accident, he now lives in Mississippi with his wife, four children, two dogs, and a cat. Horvath edits PoetryRepairShop - Contemporary International Poetry (since 1997) and writes poetry, much of which appears online.

Email: John Horvath

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