Hidden Holidays
by John Horvath, Jr.
Columbus Day
I.
Abandon hope who enter here.
Also that I should leave centuries behind.
Such a wonder, like a boy's dream of woman,
America keeps me awake. Such a time, such a time--
in America - Everything, so it seemed, we had lost.
In your towns as in our villages.
Appalachia Coal Mine. First work. Boss
give us to black men BLACK under coal dust.
Who were slaves to have slaves; Who had been slaves,
now as if they are kings. Kings in them, slaves to desires;
3. America. Free to be fools or conquerors; free to be unfree,
rise into hatred of other, the rough equality through bigotry.
Are we gypsy? Are we Jew? Jew and gypsy we have become.
Sins of the sinners who rebuke them for sinning, We hoard
tradition, at night we escape to Nod. As we were, so are you in your town.
Our children. Soon grow unaccustomed to old ways.
Ashamed, sons and daughters become Frank, Anglo, cowboys
Whose herds threaten settled farmers. We know barbed wire.
Its uses. To our children’s children whose names and tongues
almost die, elders whisper old ways. Into ears of new babes.
II.
Getting ahead. If you cannot pronounce his name,
how is he remembered? To learn that old jibber condemns
him to old ways. Be rid of accent, change her name, he will
have generations of America behind him: Mayflower whores,
Plymouth pederasts, Indian hunters, slave owners. Inherit a white
Man’s burden. He gets the fast car, fast women, fast buck.
2. Final Rome. Ghetto is domestic, an inside-carried attitude.
A choice of art, a choice of color. It is loud blustering and waving
unnecessarily with the hands. A reduction of every second word
to four letters. Join them. Might as well; they will win; our elders
will die with their false dreams. There is no return from this orgy.
Who is it keeps us at each other’s throat
III.
Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Wooden bowls,
plastic spoons, stainless steel, streamlined Cars--smoothe edges
to make straight-legged bluejean T-shirt insta-freeze-dry fast food
T.V. I-witness news and replay analysis NOW. One or Other,
America I-and-Thou NOW living'. What of third person plural?
3. I've surrendered my slave-name and returned to the lord
of my fathers whose packaged America as a gift left-behind.
Soon everyplace America. Coke crazed, chicken parts restaurants.
Mystery cow meats and soy ground up. Present is a pitiable moment.
Past retained creates future, a blind spot in the eye of progress.
4. March 1993 Restitution. Supreme Court orders it is improper
to deny advancement. For a moment, like a stillness amid slaughter,
a name is no longer alien politics. A Court cannot change souls.
There is always a thin line between what was and will be a people.
Poor. Black. White. Rich.
Aliens legal and illegal.
Khrushchev readies his shovel.
In the Old Country
My father told
it never snowed
where he was young
but the drifts were
five-foot-six deep.
BIO: Mississippian John Horváth has published poetry internationally since the 1960s (In Parenthesis, The Write Launch, Streetlight, recently in Quagmire Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal (Best of 2018), and Brave Voices (Zimbabwe)). After Vanderbilt and Florida State universities, following a bad parachute drop in Iraq leaving him 100% disabled with the VA, "Doc" Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. To promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edited the magazine at www.poetryrepairs.com from 1997 to 2017.