KARL KOWESKI

shoebox

four years old, first memories
living in a one bedroom apartment
above a bar, no yard, and a
strip joint across the street
silhouettes of naked ladies
lounging in wine glasses
painted across the chipped bricks

there was a back porch that
overlooked a small swath of
broken glass and gravel and
I remember leaving the porch
with a woman, not my mother

she took me to her one room
home that might once have been
a garage and she showed me
pictures of her own son who
had been killed overseas and
how I reminded her of her son

I let her hug me a few times
not really understanding why
then she told me to go home
and be a good boy and she
presented me with a shoebox
inside the box an orgy of
olive drab plastic soldiers
belonging to her dead son

I brought home the shoebox
to my own tearful mother who
feared I had been abducted by
one of the many drug-addicted
wine-imbibing pederasts who
allegedly roamed the streets
searching for four year-old
boys to steal and dismember

and I played with those
soldiers every day for a
week before losing interest

copyright 2003 KARL KOWESKI

JOHN HORVATH Jr

An Ophelian Woman

	How love triumphs over
	sadness is unknown among
	the young about to adult
	in the very heart of our
	cities; and, in the country,
	a milkmaid discovered
	hanging in a shed; many
	will marvel at such tragedy,
	will journey from far places
	to commune at such sights,
	for they are void of love
	in their own lives. Poets
	do well to place garlands
	at such sites: leave words
	to remember there is love
	when we become lonely.

Her garments frozen -
water, winter's memory;
ice shadows the contours
of her face and, breathless,
I hover, awaiting nectar when
none will be. Children
shall picnic here,
shall disrupt mourners
who have no memory
what shape this life might
have taken. I am a gnarled
gray man in a torn uniform
of an almost forgotten
Guardian Force thrown
into mockery by a new regime.

	As the war ended, I had
	slowly drifted back to my village
	where I had in waiting I thought
	the prize of my generation.
	Now I simply visit this spot
	where we rid us of collaboration.

	I have grown since too thin.
Children see through me;
parents abhor the sight of me,
admonish youth to avoid me
and my path; but, children
think me a hobgoblin
of their own discovery –
they vanquish me with
drawn swords imagined -
circling me, playing dead
at my glance: falling and
writhing upon the grass.

	In the park by the river
	at the weir I remember
a young woman pulled
from under thin winter
ice onto this spot where
I now stand where
I stood attempting to breathe
warm life into soft, young
breasts and clogged lungs,
having risen from the dead. 

	Of all I have done and said,
	it is this moment forever
	I remember: the power
of a love unrequited.

copyright 2003 John Horvath Jr.