David Harrison Horton

 
Model Answer (Advertising)
 
Hello. This isn’t my first go around this rodeo. I can hog-tie and give you a line, just like I got your attention. See, I could be an ad-man. You want one thing, and I offer anything else. It’s the ole switcheroo. But if I’m good, and I like to think that I am, you buy at least a part of it. Is this kid is selling me some BS, selling me a line? Is he 20% for real or 80%? Did he mention dead relatives? Is everyone in his hometown somehow afflicted with poverty related spiels? I haven’t given you any of that. Because you are golden, and you deserve a nice day. 
 
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Model Answer (Food)
 
Food has a long history. People have always eaten food. When I was poor, I ate burritos from the taco truck on 50th and International. Now, I live somewhere else, and I can’t get a burrito worth a damn. The food is all wrong. It’s complex for all the wrong reasons. Do you need fifteen ways to make noodles from the same flour? And does it need to be so labor intensive? In a village in France, one guy gets up early and makes all the bread for all the families that day. Division of actual labour. One family is eating pork, the other cassoulet. But they are all eating bread. It’s a Henry Ford world. 
 
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Model Answer (Travel)
 
When you spend time in airports, you watch a lot of sports you don’t care about. It’s an introduction to the culture. Airport bars always show the sports the locals pay the most attention to. Five screens of ping pong or NFL mark well exactly where you are. A layover that drives the point home is excruciating. You gain a vocabulary you don’t want to use, and talk with folk who won’t let it go. Who cares if you’re getting your big break on Broadway?
 
 
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Model Answer (Parks and Gardens)
 
Parks are romantic. Even someone like Bobby and Helen found love in Needle Park, and that place was sketch. That’s why I take my Nan to the park after work sometimes. They got some old folks playing ping pong and waltzing to drum machine polka. I tell her to take a look around, find a man, live a little. She says she’s happy feeding the birds. 
 
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Model Answer (Changes)
 
First, it was the Elohim, then came the angels. By the 1920s it was all about UFOs and aliens. Brautigan said it was machines of loving grace, but he was probably joking — or high — or both. Now, we are in a Matrix-like simulation. Whichever way it plays, there are no good masters. So, go ask your boss for that raise you deserve. 

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David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Necessary (Downingfield, 2025) and Maze Poems (Arteidolia, 2022). His latest chap, Model Answer, was released by CCCP Chapbooks/subpress in 2024. His work has recently appeared in The Belfast Review, Roi Fainéant, Verbal Art and Yolk, among others. He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com