Today’s choice

Previous poems

John Grey

 

 

 

Just in Case You’d Forgotten

there are some lives
lived poolside

and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –

some are chauffeured
some are piled into the backs of trucks
driven fifty miles
from border to farm
on rough roads –

some lives make deals
others deal with what’s dealt them –

all are dripping wet –

a few from beads of chlorine
most from sweat

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, Subject Matters, Between Two Fires and Covert are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.

Abiodun Salako

a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.

                                                                                                                                       i am building him a morgue
                                                                                                                                                       for Thanksgiving.

Patrick Wright

It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.

William Collins

We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.