{"id":1458,"date":"2019-09-13T01:24:44","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T01:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=1458"},"modified":"2019-09-06T19:32:03","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T19:32:03","slug":"1458","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/09\/13\/1458\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Battleground<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once a poetic feeling takes hold
\nwords get a good going over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In prose,
\nthey are merely inconvenienced.
\nWith poetry,
\nwords ache, they suffer, they bleed,
\nand they never forgive you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


The Bruise<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruise didn\u2019t heal,
\njust became one with the skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there could be no forgetting.
\nNot with the past so visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even forgiving didn\u2019t have it easy.
\nRegrets poured out of him.
\nEven un-manly tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And love remained twice-removed \u2013
\na fist,
\na harrowing pain,
\nstood in the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet
\nthey kept on living together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That bruise had
\nno place else to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The Redemption of Amy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was no longer from Arizona,
\nnor California either.
\nShe was no longer from anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she wasn\u2019t waitressing,
\nslapping guys who got too fresh,
\ncleaning up their mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor was she listening to people
\nwarning her to stop taking that stuff,
\nflush it down the toilet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she didn\u2019t need money
\nto pay the back-rent
\nor the payday lender on Broad Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had no one to call
\nto explain or apologize
\nor make her excuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the threats stopped,
\nthe criticisms faded,
\nthe despair put an end to itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was just a body on a bed.
\nIn her twenty something years,
\nthe only one of its kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa867U-1458","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1461,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}