{"id":1360,"date":"2008-09-01T15:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1360"},"modified":"2008-09-01T15:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-01T15:06:00","slug":"new-poetry-by-john-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/new-poetry-by-john-grey\/","title":{"rendered":"New poetry by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMER BUSINESS<\/span>
 <\/span>

September. Crowds leave.<\/span>
What tanned on beaches<\/span>
now works the factories.<\/span>
The tiny ice-cream stand shutters.<\/span>
Joe measures his bank-book<\/span>
against the great winter idleness.<\/span>
He hates the tourists<\/span>
but despises their leaving more.<\/span>
It's his closed fishing season.<\/span>
But the banks are cold<\/span>
and the small-mouth meager.<\/span>
It's his drinking season likewise.<\/span>
Tans fade but thirst comes in that much harder.<\/span>
The year-rounds cling to the bar like algae.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Mid-January. Feels like he floats<\/span>
somewhere between two summers,<\/span>
two shores, both impossible to reach.<\/span>
Outside's below freezing<\/span>
Norm with the smart seafood restaurant<\/span>
stays in Florida until May.<\/span>
Benny's place is so famous<\/span>
that city folk brave the cold, the roads,<\/span>
to get there no matter what the month.<\/span>
Joe can't afford to go south.<\/span>
And who wants ice-cream when the world is ice-cream.<\/span>
 <\/span>
His father had the place before him.<\/span>
Always struggled to make enough.<\/span>
“It's a seasonal business and that's<\/span>
all there is to it,” was the old man's<\/span>
favorite saying, those times when<\/span>
the family really had to tough it out.<\/span>
Drove his mother mad, his father to the grave,<\/span>
his sister to the city.<\/span>
Can't sell. No one wants to buy.<\/span>
Can't just give it up.<\/span>
There's always another tourist season.<\/span>
Hot days. People hungering<\/span>
for a tasty cold concoction<\/span>
in a sugar or a wafer cone.<\/span>
Mid August there's a long long line outside his stand.<\/span>
And damn if he's not at the head of it.<\/span>


* <\/span><\/font>John Grey is from Providence, Rhode Island, and has been published recently in Agni, Worcester Review,  South Carolina Review<\/span> and The Pedestal<\/span>. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMER BUSINESS September. Crowds leave.What tanned on beachesnow works the factories.The tiny ice-cream stand shutters.Joe measures his bank-bookagainst the great winter idleness.He hates the touristsbut despises their leaving more.It's his closed fishing season.But the banks are coldand the small-mouth meager.It's his drinking season likewise.Tans fade but thirst comes in that much harder.The year-rounds cling to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}