Featured Poet: John Grey
Good morning! Today is another Feature Friday and, marks the first submission from someone I wasn’t overly familiar with. I have seen his name appear across several platforms and enjoy the work I’ve read.
It’s also rather exciting, to receive work from someone unfamiliar. John has appeared across multiple websites and has a few books published, I’ll have the link to his latest work at the bottom. In the meantime, here are five poems by him.
DRAFT HORSES
Two draft horses pull the plow across the field.
I know it's history recreated for the amusement
of our education.
Any real field would go under the tractor.
There'd be no two behemoths harnessed
to clunking, ancient machinery,
no farmer gripping tight to rope and chain,
grinding out the old growth,
prepping the land for seed.
But how it used to be tops how it is.
Dull hooves stomp the earth relentlessly.
Nostrils dine on their own sweat.
Heavy brown vein-striped heads,
trunk-like legs,
strain against ground's high rocky tension,
sway the bellies free.
"Don't worry," says a guide in period costume.
"On the hour, Gus and Diamond are unhooked,
toweled down, left to rest and nibble in a grassy meadow."
They'll be back at work tomorrow.
Poor creatures.
They thought they had the future off.
RHONDA’S SEIZURE
Rhonda has a seizure right
there in the classroom,
dropping to the floor,
writhing like a fish on land.
The children panic.
Some scream.
Even the boys cry.
The teacher rushes to her aid,
prays the poor girl
doesn’t bite her tongue.
Rhonda’s venture into
synchronous neuronal activity
is over almost as soon as it began.
She likens it to being stuck
in an elevator
with the lights out
and a bell ringing somewhere.
But then the door opens
and she steps quietly out
into a gathering of familiar faces.
The elevator closes behind her.
LIFE RONDO
Crows caw open the dawn.
Moonlight's doubts
give way to sun's pity.
She rocks the child in her arms
to dampen its cries.
Her husband's dressing for
another day of wearing
out the pavement.
At twilight,
it's the turn of the bats.
They soar, they swoop,
they bite their way through fruit flesh,
flapping and noshing,
embellished by
their vampire connotations.
The baby sucks at her teat.
No blood but not much milk either.
And no job
according to the worn soles
of her husband's shoes.
Evening features an owl, a wolf,
a hoot or a howl
according to the state of hunger.
She puts the child aside,
makes soup from food scraps.
He slumps across the table,
weary as hell,
wearied by hell.
Late night,
baby asleep already…
for a few hours at least.
Wildlife retreats.
She curls up in the bed
beside him,
cries a little.
He assures her tomorrow
will be better.
Yes tomorrow...
and those damnable crows
TLINGIT FROM AFAR
Your siblings are
drawn to the ebbing tide,
and mud banks,
where clams like dead stars
poke out of brown sky.
From afar,
you cannot recognize
yourself in them.
From afar,
their sun-warped skinny shapes
have nothing to do
with your inheritance.
They are gatherers.
You are a child.
They wallow in muck.
They creep like slugs.
You’re far from wanting in.
HANDS AND THORN
Everything is moving away
despite her outstretched hands.
What was near is now distance.
Pain takes its place,
even when she bends down in her garden.
Between youth and now,
the planet has darkened.
And there’s been more laundry
than company.
Her husband is in the earth.
For all its beauty,
the tulip cannot take his place.
Her children have moved on from family.
They call from time to time,
but when the conversation ends,
they put the receiver down
like pulling a switch.
And there go her hands again,
reaching out to the roses this time,
cutting her finger on a thorn.
Sharp edges and drops of blood –
these are her people now.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.
