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John Grey

The February Selected Poet is John Grey

Please feel free to email John at: jgrey10233@aol.com

John Grey

THIS GUY BESIDE ME ON THE BUS

Drank a full quart of rat’s milk
this morning.
Know how many of them little
buggers you gotta catch
to get a whole quart?
Stand watch by the holes
in the wall
with my mallet
and the patience that comes
with collecting string
and tying it together
hour after hour after hour.
It’s gonna be a net
when I’m done,
big enough to trap all the
rats in the world,
and meet the piper to their
mesh waltz at my feet
and then when they’re tired
and sore and ready to beg
my forgiveness,
I’ll bend down
and start the milking,
that liquid fairly rushing out
under my finger’s coaxing.
Plenty enough for me.
Plenty enough for the world.
Then, you’ll gather around me
on this bus,
not slide off the seat
as you do now.
We’ll drink and drink
until that elixir
bubbles brilliant red
in the whites of our eyes…
And it won’t be a case
of going where we’re going.
Like me, with that inside you,
wherever you are,
we’ll both be there.

THIS FAMILY BUSINESS

As soon as sunlight’s pensioned off,
the dog can play in our backyard again,
a frisky strand of canine white,
without those old, stiff bones to slow him.
And he sure will set the local mutts to barking.

And Grandmother can peel potatoes
in the kitchen, without worrying
that the blade will slice her wrinkled wrists.
Grandfather can fiddle with the boiler in the cellar.
A gas explosion would be a burst of laughter
to him now.
By the way, old, old timers,
those new tenants and now the previous tenants.
Good job.

Oh yes, parents, feel free to take a spin
out on that icy road in your new car.
Sure, you may still skid in this life
but your tread grips so fiercely
the vaporous surface of the next.
Sister, ski the slopes the color of your skin,
glissade through the trees if they
won’t bend away from you.
And brother, play your music
louder than the sirens racing
to the burning house.
Drive and sky and play
the people out of their sad comfort zones.
The world’s in dire need of shudders.

I’ll be in my study, rocking that chair
as easy as my formless frame allows.
I spoke at a séance last night,
blanched a young girl’s face the night before.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll go haunt the doctor
who didn’t know left from right.
Of course, I like it here,
the afterlife’s redeemed his blunder
but I won’t tell him that.
We’re all so good at this haunting business,
It’s like we’ve been doing this all our lives.

ME IN YOU

I howl like a wolf
as evil must.
At the edge of flesh;
there can only be madness.
Come nighttime,
my body catches fire,
fins grow, wings sprout.
I swim in the blood lake.
I fly in the terrible sky.
Hyenas, jackals, keep their distance,
go in after my scraps.
No sun.
No light.
The moon feigns triumph
but it’s the dark that’s victor.
In silent rage,
I speak for
the secret monsters
of the soul.
I gush like wounds.
I spill like filth.
Years attach to me
like barnacles of death.
I’m nowhere in particular
but everywhere in earnest.
Look at your own face.
I’m the wrinkles,
the red scissor-cut
cut of the eyes,
the restless hands,
abandoned heart,
the downturn to the grin.
Sure, I rot
but only as a way
of growing.

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, recently published in Paterson Literary Review, Southern California Review and Natural Bridge with work upcoming in New Plains Review, Leading Edge and Louisiana Literature.