Today’s choice

Previous poems

John Grey

 

 

 

Your Town

stuck between
no place
and nowhere

it’s more
of a gathering
than a town

and if there’s
beer aplenty
so much the better –

back-slapping
piss-taking
bonhomie by the breath-full –

all are good
anything is possible
everybody’s stuck here –

and then
the laughter wears thin
the beer goes warm –

and you realize
there is no more
this is it –

the whole circus
the whole
excuse for a miracle –

men with busted heads
women with weary eyes
kids with blank expressions –

something better
never comes
just sleep –

the long rollcall
of night to which
nobody answers

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

Erwin Arroyo Pérez

Here, in my Manhattan room / insomnia tugs at me like a half-closed taxi door / letting all the echoes in
/ an ambulance carries the last breath of an asthmatic man

Kweku Abimbola

My father walks backwards
better than most walk forward—
so whenever he sewed his steps into the living
room carpet, I rushed to mirror my moon-
walking, until he froze,
froze like he’d been caught
by the beat.

Paul Bavister

We found our eyes first,
as they swirled through fragments
of black jumper, dark pine trees
and an orange sunset sky

Phil Vernon

Because we were four
and I only had strength to carry one
and knew no other way
I carried the one who called out loudest;
threatened us most.