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.
Battleground
Once a poetic feeling takes hold
words get a good going over.
In prose,
they are merely inconvenienced.
With poetry,
words ache, they suffer, they bleed,
and they never forgive you.
The Bruise
Bruise didn’t heal,
just became one with the skin.
So there could be no forgetting.
Not with the past so visible.
Even forgiving didn’t have it easy.
Regrets poured out of him.
Even un-manly tears.
And love remained twice-removed –
a fist,
a harrowing pain,
stood in the way.
And yet
they kept on living together.
That bruise had
no place else to go.
The Redemption of Amy
She was no longer from Arizona,
nor California either.
She was no longer from anywhere.
And she wasn’t waitressing,
slapping guys who got too fresh,
cleaning up their mess.
Nor was she listening to people
warning her to stop taking that stuff,
flush it down the toilet.
And she didn’t need money
to pay the back-rent
or the payday lender on Broad Street.
She had no one to call
to explain or apologize
or make her excuses.
And the threats stopped,
the criticisms faded,
the despair put an end to itself.
She was just a body on a bed.
In her twenty something years,
the only one of its kind.