poetry

Self-Educating by John Grey

The boy is learning

what to do

with his own tiny steps.

Beyond diapers

and breast-feeding,

he’s onto the good stuff,

knocking a glass

from the coffee table,

getting his fingers caught

in doors of cabinets,

toppling and

landing on his jelly bones.

He’s putting stuff

in his mouth.

He’s touching

what is there to feel.

He’s embracing a teddy.

He’s tossing it

out of the crib.

He’s trying out

his knees, his elbows,

his arms, his legs.

He even bleeds a little

now and then.

Or runs into a wall.

And he cries –

why not-

his voice must be there

for some reason –

hungry, thirsty,

hot, cold,

or simply bored –

they’re all an excuse

for sound.

And so it’s

push, pull, reach, fall, rise –

it’s choreography for little people.

John Grey

Being Me by John Grey

The fault, if there is one, lies in the way

my days keep shedding parts of speech.

Loose nouns roll under the furniture.

Verbs are still warm from use.

Adjectives get up my nostrils

whether they’re sweet perfumes

or rotting stench.

Even the adverbs cling like burrs.

Punctuation is all over the place.

I bump into quotation marks

and those oddball semi-colons.

I trip over commas on the floor.

Cut me. Please do.

You’ll see that what emerges

is not blood but a clause, a syntax.

Dig further and you’ll come up with a handful

of half‑formed paragraphs.

With any luck, they’ll still be breathing.

I didn’t know, back when I first

slipped into a book, that it was an IV line,

a drip-feed of people talking on buses,

or quarreling in kitchens,

or riding to the rescue

or wrapped up in the satin sheets of romance.

Every gesture they made left a bruise

in the shape of a sentence.

Call it a birthmark. My mother, carrying me,

startled by a sponge, or an encyclopedia,

or a poet declaiming to no one in particular

on a park bench. Something lodged early.

So who’s to blame when language

flutters around my skull

like moths drawn to a porch light.

My head can only hold so much.

If I don’t empty it onto a page,

there’s the real risk.

My brain could bust.

Imagine the mess.

You’d either have to

clean up the spill or read it.

John Grey

(Image by DWB)

Homeless in Winter by John Grey

(Today we welcome back poet John Grey. Get used to seeing him over the next four days!–The Eds.)

From a gray and restless sky,

the snow comes down like a verdict.

Guilty, it says.

And the cold is ten degrees below mercy.

A leaf is torn apart, as is my face.

The wind makes no distinction

between what belongs and what’s been cast out.

Swirling drifts erase birds from the sky’s memory.

Shards of ice collide.

They pull me into their quarrel.

Am I, like them, a fragment blown off course.

A stray cat wails from the pain of exposure.

A rabbit disappears into the earth before night can claim it.

A mouse finds entry in wall

sealed tight against the likes of us.

Somewhere, I tell myself, a fire still burns for me.

And a woman waits with an embrace warm enough to unmake winter.

But that is a country I can no longer reach.

For now I walk the frozen floorboards of this weather,

unable to think of anyone else’s suffering,

not with all this needling, this stabbing,

this piercing reminder of where I cannot ever be.

Tonight, it’s my turn.

I’m the one

who needs dragging in from the streets.

John Grey

The Marriage Ring by David Henson

The marriage is still 

on its feet, 

but rubber-legged. 

Ringside, I crease 

my scorecard. 

My wife twirls 

her pen. 

When the marriage drops 

its hands, a jab snaps 

back its head. 

The marriage ducks 

behind its forearms. 

A shot to the stomach 

pops out its mouthpiece. 

After the marriage lands one, 

falling rocks batter it 

to the ropes above me. 

The marriage is staggered, 

but refuses to go down, 

thugs it out, blood 

winding down its leg. 

My wife reaches up a finger, 

steals a taste,

and shares it with me.

(end)

David Henson

(Image is David and Annabelle)

Going Back to the Red House (Grunge) by Dale Williams Barrigar

The garden has grown

over and become

a sanctuary-of-sorts for all kinds

of stray cats, birds, possums, and other

explosions of indigenous life and

the porch is broken

the shutters just fall

and no more time is to be had

for trifles like these, at all

but there’s a recyclable paper bag

containing donuts once

snagged in a weed tree.

And upon it

“Someone” you will

never forget

has written in

(before trailing off

and going away)

magic marker

calligraphy:

“Dear Sir,

you kissed my feet the last time

I saw you and it made

your hair

fall

around my walking

for a very long time.

But I am OK

this way

out and about again

on my own

yet I thought I

just wanted you

to know

and oh

my hand is steadier now –

and

I used to want you,

I really did, you know”

Dale Barrigar Williams

Season Dream(s) by Dale Barrigar Williams

(This week we are pleased to present work by one of America’s under-appreciated writers and academics, Dale Williams Barrigar, who is also the Co-Editor of this site. He has wonderful twin daughters and a damn fine pack of Dogs, too.)

(Image provided by DWB)

Cabin blizzard on Halloween

visiting Alaska

in the evening

every single flake

that falls

memory of you

as

October branches

scratch

at cabin window

sleeping gone

grizzly bears somewhere

near here

but I’m not fearful

Mr. Sasquatch

but what am I trying so hard

swooning

for

as

the last stripe

of red sunlight

now falls down

around old autumn

apple tree

shadows

crooked trunk

tree branches

turbulent truculent

dreams of another world

in only half sleep

all night long

next morning

November

One

there is an

alone woodpecker

in sudden sunlight red and gray

and his feathers too

are red and gray

as his drummings

on the tree they

sound

like rock and roll…

Dale Williams Barrigar

I Grind My Teeth: Oral Poetry by Jordan Eve Morral

It was kindergarten.

The creepy guy on lunch duty

pulled my teeth out with a wrench.

They fell out in a clump

of enamel and gum.

Still, I felt convinced

they wouldn’t notice.

I lost my teeth again –

the four front ones on top.

They remained in my mouth

with Scotch tape, held down.

My teeth are so loose

they protrude at all angles;

My lips have parted,

forever alone.

It’s weird. In dreams

I’ll be endlessly falling,

my throat slit,

a child’s voice calling,

but I only wake up scared–

delirious and delusional–

when my fangs are not bared

and able to reflect the moon.

*Dreams of lost teeth commonly symbolize feelings of insecurity, loss, or transformation.

I have always been interested in the concept of dream interpretation, yet I am always going

back and forth between believing and not believing the accuracy of a real-life translation.

However, I have been dreaming about losing my teeth for as long as I can remember. Starting

in elementary school and continuing into the present day, I have had the lingering fear that I will

one day soon be without my teeth.

The hard thing about this constant worry is that I am afraid I will never be able to rid my mind of

it. Teeth are so often the focus of my dreams that I spend my waking hours thinking of them too.

Unfortunately, this leads to more of the same dreams. I cannot stop the cycle.

It is for no other reason than my recurring dreams that I wrote this poem. On some level, I think I

expected it to be a form of catharsis. In this aspect, I believe I have failed. I have simply

confirmed how much time I spend thinking about my teeth. I am perpetuating the cycle.

Jordan Eve Morral

(Image is of the author)