Tag: John Grey

GATHERING THE EGGS

My lover sings, picks hay from her sweater.

She has been to the barn to gather eggs.

It’s overcast but she doesn’t bother

with ordinary electricity.

Instead, she lights a scented candle,

watches the wax drip,

sates the kitchen with sweet maple.

She is a shoebox filled with moments like this.

A collection of tintypes,

each in the act of doing something different from the others.

She could pick roses,

toss the petals across the bed.

Or massage the knots out of my back.

Or play her flute,

those light, airy notes

that link up all the times

that we have spent together.

Of course, there are always eggs to gather.

But she might come back inside whistling.

Or reciting the poems of Burns.

This morning, she’s breaking the eggs

on the side of the fry pan,

humming along as the yolk

flows down the sizzling sides.

From the organic vessel,

to the melody, the steam,

the oozing color,

she’s got everything covered.

There’s not a moment without her

that can stand up to a moment with her.

IN DOGTOWN

The dog has chewed your favorite shoe

to pieces.

The factory’s shutting down.

Half the town is out of work.

That damn mutt.

Still, that’s what you get for leaving him

alone in the house all day.

And losing your job…

more fault at your door.

You want ten times what

the company can pay some kid in Asia.

But at least

you’ll be home all day now.

You can watch the dog,

keep your good stuff

out of his teeth.

But what about that other dog.

The giant dog.

The dog with a head the size of a wrecking ball,

claws as big and sharp as bulldozer blades.

There’s nothing he can’t get

his jaw around.

He can chew up industry.

And he can spit out the likes of you.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in
That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work
upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie
Review and failbetter.

THE LONG TERM ABOUT TO TERMINATE

He doesn’t rest or sleep,

merely occupies that hospital bed.

Same with his brain, his body.

They’re just death’s waiting rooms.

Our bewilderment is contagious.

Is this really our father?

Conversations with dad lately

have been like twisting and turning the radio dial

and merely cranking up the static.

Our mother says he’s been reliving his childhood.

And he’s taken to singing nursery rhymes.

“Ding! Dong! Dell!”  is not what we came to hear.

Sadly, she’s not much better.

But she knows our names at least,

even if, from time to time,

she connects them to the wrong face.

But she insists, in heaven, it will be different.

They’ll be together, in their prime,

and remembering every last detail.

So, to her, he’s a date in the future.

To we kids, he’s a presence,

so like him and yet so unalike,

but enough of him still alive

to block our better memories from kicking in.

And he makes me conscious of my own vulnerability,

how life was not designed to hold together

the way I wish it to.

Not in the long term, at least.

And he’s at the very end of that long time,

one ruinous breath, one discredited heartbeat away

from the obituaries.

His dying is ruining it for the living.

The more he forgets, the more we don’t want to know.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke Review.