‘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.