‘GIRL NEXT DOOR, These Birds In Winter; The Church On The Hill; Here's To The Yeast Of Us; Late Night Diner’
Photographer - Tobi Brun
GIRL NEXT DOOR
The girl next door
left years ago.
Next door went with her.
In its place,
the government erected
this Federal Nuclear Waste
Disposal and Encasement Facility.
In lieu
of her sunning in her back yard
in a bikini,
I watch workers in
protective coveralls
unload trucks,
roll barrels
into huge underground vaults.
Instead
of the occasional
over-the-fence conversations,
I’m constantly being harassed
by men in dark suits.
As the cliché goes,
she lit up my life.
But she didn’t kill cells.
She didn’t cause
nausea and vomiting.
THESE BIRDS IN WINTER
Bird song is desperate song,
Sparrows chatter endlessly
from the hedge mesh
as if in danger of losing
their voices to the cold.
Chickadee notes jar like
fingers tapping down the scale
on a guitar's rusty strings.
Even the blue-jay’s
sax-like cry
shudders against the
deepening ice.
Trees are bare, branches
nailed to the frozen sky.
Birds sing with beauty’s
dying breath.
Tunes begin to snow
HERE’S TO THE YEAST OF US
I'm brewing beer in the bathtub,
You’re baking bread in the kitchen.
Who would have thought that, years after
we first breathed each other's bodies,
we'd both be sniffing yeast and liking it?
Who would have figured we’d have nothing
more in common now than that fungoid aroma?
I rake my hands through the liquid as
if to stir more of the odor to the surface.
You lower your head into the bread-making machine,
in mute obeisance to the fumes.
This crop of beer, this loaf of bread,
eventually make it to our table.
And so, after a fashion, do we.
THE CHURCH ON THE HILL
The water’s slipped back into the river.
And now the town
is all mud.
The roads are impassable
for all but the heaviest vehicles.
And the entire population
are hunkered down in the church basement,
curled up beneath borrowed blankets.
Even their dogs.
Soon, they will trudge out into mud world,
to the horror of their homes –
the rugs of sludge, grungy chairs,
the smell of foul food.
And the cops will round up
the half-buried dead.
But for now,
there are people,
clinging together,
high and dry.
The mud can’t think of everything.
LATE NIGHT DINER
Two minutes of slow stirring,
and then sip.
Look out the dusty glass window
at the passing patrol car
and then sip.
A glance or two for the fortyish blonde
in twentyish clothes
and then sip.
And a more surreptitious peek ' "~
at the tattooed biker
so he don't know you're staring,
and then another sip.
Maybe a joke with the waitress
can separate a sip or two
and a three-day old newspaper article
will generously split a pair.
Look at your watch and sip.
Scratch your knee and sip.
Before long this coffee
will not only last you the night,
it'll tell you how
that's accomplished.
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, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
