I wasn't trying to eavesdrop
but what can you do.
The tables are so close,
and some couples
are just louder than us.
They never stop talking,
while we enjoy our silences.
It's that vacuum theory again.
As our lives shrink,
our neighbors’ presence expands.
I feel her complaining, his anger.
And when bitterness turns to sorrow,
to apology, to smiles,
I'm right there with them.
Sure I tell you I love you.
But he loves her is what I'm really saying.
MAKER OF MAPS
The stream is silver, robust.
Five hundred miles away
But here’s a breath they cannot take back,
there’s a landscape they can
never build upon,
overhead, a sky too fat for framing.
ALL ABOUT THIS WILD LIFE
"Plenty of wild-life in these parts,"
the man in the convenience store had said,
though he never mentioned
"wild" means "still", "life" means "death”.
But there they were, like litter on the roadside,
my first bob-cat flattened, skinned just like
an unlucky neighborhood tabby.
And an armadillo, its suit of armor
no match for highway trucks.
I slowed as if every mile per hour
put another life at threat, but nothing
braked the road kill.
"What was that turtle thinking?"
my wife asked. "And don't
opossums ever learn."
We passed an ignorant deer,
turned over on its back,
four legs stiff and straight
and pointing to the sky.
And then a dumb skunk,
whiffed the remnants of
its futile smell,
an hour or two beyond
the time it sprayed the tractor wheel.
A car passed us,
a huge tan bloodhound in the back seat,
poking its head through the window,
bellowing low
how not every animal was dead.
"So if we take them with us,
it's okay," I told myself.
Then you spied the crows
feasting on a splattered woodchuck.
Our car startled them.
They begrudgingly took off
leaving behind their carrion.
"Good grub just a half mile down the road a-ways,"
the man in the convenience store had said.
THE MARTINGALE FAMILY
The Martingale family’s annual vacation
can’t really begin because there’s a
beached whale taking up their favorite
tanning and picnic spot.
They stand in a line, mother, father,
eldest daughter, youngest daughter, son,
just off the roadway,
equipped with cooler, beach towels,
sun screen, even a badminton set,
all looking down at the great lump
of gray and white whose heart is beating
futilely against its own heaviness
while its fin flaps more and more slowly
as it waves goodbye to the world.
So much for pristine white sand,
azure waters, Montana-sized sky
and round and golden god-like sun.
“This shouldn’t be allowed,” says the mother.
“Where’s the…” the father stammers.
A name for those who push behemoths
back into oceans eludes him.
“Why did it have to happen
this week of all weeks,”
blurts out eldest daughter.
Youngest daughter’s eyes well up.
She was hoping some coloring
would disguise her acne outbreak.
The son isn’t sure that
a dying whale is a bad thing.
He’s eager to poke a stick
in its heaving side.
The Martingale family are
the perfect example of
unforeseen circumstances, uprooted plans.
For compassion, for empathy,
I suggest you look elsewhere.
SOLITARY VISION
Tuesday night, laundromat,
Wednesday night, library, bring back
Thursday night, supermarket,
seen the twice. Young, pretty.
Lives are ultimately blue-prints, I'm finding.
I watched Rosemary’s Baby by myself
in the apartment
with the lights low.
And then The Omen,
same scenario,
only a glass of wine for company
(it remained unsipped by the way).
In a small dark room,
on a lumpy couch,
I was witness to the birth of the antichrist
whether it was Mia Farrow
gently rocking her yellow-eyed
bundle of feral joy
and Lee Remick’s dead offspring
being swapped out
for a sweet smiling proxy
for all the hell below.
Sure, in between,
I saw my share of westerns,
rom-coms, war epics etc.
but none that stayed with me
as compellingly as the progeny of Satan.
That’s why I don’t trust the son
a mother introduces me to
on my solitary walk through the park.
And I stay clear of the pickup basketball game
One of shirts or skins could well be
the false Messiah.
I don’t even accept the offer of the kid
who volunteers to help me load my groceries
into the trunk of my car.
Sure he may just want a tip.
But it could well lead to a deadly immersion
in a lake of burning sulfur.
People like to remind me
that I was a little boy once.
And sure I broke the vase.
But that was clumsiness
not perdition.
A LIFE GIVEN OVER TO FUNERALS
A telephone clicks.
A door quietly closes.
An email goes unanswered.
Or we just take different paths.
We spend so much of our lives
being cut off from people,
yet only when they're really dead
do we make a big show of it.
From now on,
I'm going to mourn every chance I get.
I’ll sob at twilight, turn ashen
when people show their backs.
You say goodbye and I send flowers.
Your “Write soon”
is a priest’s incantation
as he stands over the grave
of no contact for months.
Why let it all gush out on dead ground.
May as well let my tears flood a rock.
May as well proclaim.
“God, I miss that toe-nail clipping,
that strand of hair.”
From now on, whatever is part of me
has to answer for its absence.
Even an hour apart
should involve a burial.
There’s nothing more final
than “Until the next time.”
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE BLUES
—John Gray
Someone left the front door unlocked.
Guy ran up the stairs, found his Missy
in bed with another man,
blew his head off with a shot gun.
Another’s been picking cotton all day,
with bent back and sun-scarred face.
A third met the devil through the demon drink.
A fourth can’t stay out of the gambling den.
A fifth finds his only pleasure
with the ladies of the night.
If it wasn’t for me and my second-hand guitar,
you’d know none of this.
____________________
John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident, who has recently been published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. His latest books, Between Two Fires; Covert; and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. He has work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad. Welcome back to the Kitchen, John, who first visited us in April of last year.
____________________
—Medusa
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