By John Horváth
If I say seven miles southeast from
Memphis in the Delta where cotton
bites through pickers’ hands to bone
or where jazz ripples outside N’Orleans
through a clear night's air to beckon
into lust Cajun boys and soft women
near a major throughway on which cars
stream toward Big Easy’s bug-zap lights
that draw folk to the promises of quick
success, dead failure or better than
they may have been – would it be more
real, would if I said was a Black man,
Cajun or mean class, would it be more
real and his death by fire more assured
to have come to pass as told among
neighbors some nights when discussion
seems to wane and ghosts of the past
whisper out of old mouths grown tired,
unruly - would it make more sense that
he up and burned to crisp and ash, would
it be more worthy to note if he had
brown eyes and lips chapped, but none
of this explains how the burn touched
only his flesh as if God had need of
bedsheets and bed but not him as if
his soul furious to escape fired bone
and sinew so sudden flames touched
sinner only and nothing else.
So, what do you know…
Old Joe South come of age
in a two-bit time
when we reckoned on
things to make better
the more mundane and historic dullness
of our lives, a singularly
and scientific time
when church hollerin'
had ceased for good
and a jacked-up shadetree
Ford dismantled
was of no purpose
but a flower pot shined
with a wire brush.
His mam knowed it, left
him for it, to the city
with its bright lit jungle
where soul theft, pickpocket
sex, and 'lectric
music copied farmland
sequence--one season
planting or reaping
or waiting on a next
time that was right/ripe--
field hand time
but so fast you could hardly keep pace.
Old Joe South come of age
in such a time.
(And I promise you
there WAS just such a time.)
Wanted all his days to do
useful with his hands
all stubby large and mistaken
for clubs to beat
the earth callous from hard
clay to dry dry powder
in a time of near famine
and drought upon the land.
Wanted all his days to know
something, someone,
and beget a notion proper
as a Sunday's suit
that folk would admire.
Looky, they'd say, there
goes Joe wearing his fancy suit;
boy had a bright
idee. And such they'd say.
That's all he wanted.
And a pretty gal to take hold his arm
whilst walkin' to church
on Bingo nights
when the ladies' auxiliary
met to gossip--
you shore nuff got a catch, li'le miss,
they'd say and he'd be proud
to hear of it.
So he didn't mind none the much waiting
on the school to let
out of an afternoon
when he could look over the pickin's.
The one with the pink dress and black
shine shoes with the ribbon in her hair
one Friday was who he come t'settle on.
Half his age and twice
his powers she was.
Could read.
Chat easy with her neighbors.
That the one.
So he would wait for her,
follow her to home,
pray to his God for her.
Was no one listened
after a certain time when
he'd come home from the field
and settle down to pray
and she weren't paying him
no mind from day to day.
It is the way of miracles
that when you expect
then there ain't none
and when they come it
was when you hadn't said
no prayer at all.
And so on a trip
to the merchandiser Joe found
his chosen in the shop
while old Joe South
was lookin' over a hoe
what to kill weeds with
and her smile
was much like it was toward him
in every dream
he'd had of her smiling at him
then she said,
why you follow me all the time
an' you ain't said
nothin' t'me 'bout nothin'
though I can see you
always a bit out of reach
but near at hand as if,
should I need, you would
be there in a moment
like some TV hero so why
you following
unless you got something in mind.
Was a lot of breath for a small thing.
(Or maybe
he just thought she'd said it.)
He might have asked about
why always a pink
dress and black
shine shoes and a ribbon
in her hair even when she changed shoes
and dress they was pink and shine black
and she never but this once stepped out
of her way
on her way home with him following
or gave sign
she'd noticed him yonder back.
Instead he smiled
and shrugged his shoulders
and held up his hands
raw and all clubbish
in front of him
with his elbows bent, palms
turned up as if in prayer
while he tried to make his eyes
tell her how much he had come
to love her
but this forwardness
in this unlikely place
it put him off.
And he never again followed
her from school.
And the folks in town come
to say he weren't no little lamb
but that old Joe South
was some queer egg.
So he come to accept
that's why his mama
had left for the big city of lights
and pickpocket sex
that his daddy said she had gone to
so she wouldn't have
to know this of him.
But his Pa, hearing tell of it,
beat the boy blue
and black with red long welts
that was near blood
but Joe said nothing, didn't object,
neither cried
nor moved out
from under the razor strop that
fell like lightening on his back
and crossed his cheek
because the boy knew
from the moment he could think
that his Pa was up to
do it one day or other
to punish him
for chasin' off his mother.
(And folk agreed that he deserved it.)
And folk said he died like that,
never again saying
a word to no one and
never leaving the place for town
and others averred it was he run off
like his mama had and that he had died
in the big city alone begging for food
and eating cast-offs from trashbins
whilst others said the old man
had him committed to the silly farm
where likes of him could be with likes
but I'll tell you the gospel truth that
old Joe South he never died
and he never run off as they said
but he lay down in his bed
after the beating and was consumed
by the fire of his love gone bad.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and his
Pa finding it figured a miracle and he
never said word
of it leastwise that folk
might think him gone lunatic
thus dangerous.
So what's it supposed to mean
that he burnt
with desire and from desire
burnt hisself up?
He was a man
though a fool or a fool man
who traded his life for his soul,
a devilish bargain.
So what that no one goes
to church to holler
but they read of it
in the grocery checkout tabloid
and wonder in their souls
if such things happen
wonder between the old lady
who writes a bad check
and the cashier girl whose plain pink
lips and beribboned hair won't smile.
As you unload your wants
onto her counter top
she says almost apologetically,
I known a man
such as that.
I did. Let me tell you 'bout him,
he had hands like clubs,
raw from the cotton,
dangerous hands,
but his eyes said he had
for a long time with no good sense
come to love me…
About The Author:
Recently in Quagmire Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal (Best of 2018), Brave Voices (Zimbabwe), London Reader, Subterranean Blue). In total, Horvath has published nearly 500 poems since the 70’s.
After Vanderbilt and Florida State universities, following a bad parachute drop in Iraq leaving him 100% disabled, "Doc" Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. To promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edited the magazine at www.poetryrepairs.com from 1997 to 2017.
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