in parentheses

Mississippian John Horváth has published poetry internationally since the 1960s. In total Horvath has published nearly 500 poems since the 70’s. 100% disabled, “Doc” Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. To promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edited the magazine at http://www.poetryrepairs.com from 1997 to 2017.

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ERIN’S BUST

Folding clothes and wiping plates,
she works at silent attitudes
not quite new, not quite old,
nor not quite suited to the place
her parents set for her.
(Spreading puffy soft
hurting sensitive soreness)
She who occupied with silent spaces
between well-constructed sentences
and book pages perfectly organized
with secretarial precision.
(Self-consciously showing,
then the acceptable purchase
as passage token pedestal rising)
Somehow proper that her own maturity
silently bubbled into breasts, ballooned
from awkward puffiness into prettiness
at which boys smile and men pretend
not seeing. Another passive place
to occupy (with practiced patience
while growing limbs and flesh
on the pedestal).

It’s not so bad up there,
her mother says to her;
look down sometime
and judge yoursef
in the reflection
of what they
see around
your feet.

AFTER THE FIRE FLAMES OUT

After brooding summer windswept fire
across fertile fields, valleys and creeks dry
and ashen wait for cool winter white and deep
spreading toward the edges of holidays, then
the blank space in the heart craves movement

Ice melts into parched rock and cuts
meanders toward the sea where birds swerve
through mists, on updrafts of promised rain
toward moisture, moisture becoming the cloud
the unfixed boundaries of craven movements.

From first seeds blown from other lands
toward this vacant burnt empty shore where
the great sweep of storms drops lightening,
these roots take hold and propagate along new banks.
The time is come to fix our mobile hearts,
our mobile thoughts, to plant our flags
mid rock and daub
of Divine and everlasting Truth.

Woman takes a man; a man takes wife;
their emptiness complete, it’s sanctified
by Church, made legal by an act of State:
the river loses name when it enters a Great Lake
(the waters keep it fresh; its commerce lives).

SYNTHETIC PEARLS

I have seen the pearl in an oyster live;
I planted in the oyster shell my seed
and there it grew around itself a ring,
a ring, another, and another ring.

Smooth surface of the pearl in the oyster half,
reflects its maker’s face on smooth soft arcs:
the light that was my soul exists inside the thing,
reflects its maker’s life on its smooth new face.

Child, tighten yourself against the wayward seed.
The promise of the pearl is promised out of greed–
you must believe that oysters take some careful time
to find the grain that grows into those perfect arcs
that are unique and natural.

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