in parentheses

John Grey is an Australian born poet, who works as a financial systems analyst. He has been recently published in Poem, Spindrift, Prism International and the horror anthology, What Fears Become with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Pinyon.

Pregnant and Alone Meets Sure Enough of Himself

Beauty, a concept desperate
for a co-mingled heart,
hair drooping over eyes,
a petrified trunk,
an affordable habit in clothes and jewelry,
a spark glowing in dark places –
all these angles, forms, silhouettes,
and oscillating nightclubs,
sticky streaks of sexual sweat,
but small children are described
by the turning of her circumference,
interfere as bodies grind,
as red lights expose
beneath tight clothing,
bleached face, tea-colored eyes,
and legs zigging-zagging
in search of a body blessed –

proboscis genitals protruding,
bronze throat, chains clanging,
coming toward her,
like a creature broken loose,
extended arms, elongated teeth,
between beats of a black song –
beefy and bored and belligerent,
circling and glittery as the inside moon.
with all its mirrored sides,
from thin hair he washed
and tried to save
from the comb’s dire scouring
to the waxy smell of his after-shave –
tell me this babe,
what’s greater than a good time?

her hollows dunked by infinite guy,
life’s details harden,
like heaving bellies,
on their way to huge –
he asks her to step away
as if now ends her nothingness,
and, in this dream, she’ll be doing all the floating,
that her answer’s in the already past,
in his mind made up,
in all that is in him intentional –

yes, hold me upright, she says,
it’s your choice
as they trip toward
the island of feet set to music.
its threatening polish,
her steps like legs that have just begun,
in a struggle to reverse darkness.
pressed to all this male ideology,
manholes of face and after –
she hears it coming,
the Madison Avenue sell –
I have a car –
my hand touches yours –
plots can’t help from hatching –
why not, she figures,
I’m lonely and bulbous enough to try –

Now buried in flesh inside a car,
fallopian tubes flapping
to the stroke of the midnight conductor –
orders from the overstepping moon
and the glare of eager snakes.
pounding on the split side of leather,
rotating in the breeze of his breath,
red-faced by degrees,
almost pushed out of rotund frame,
scraping skin, elbowing breasts,
the shape of love
for all who have learned to endure pain and untidiness –

later, heart wet with steaming,
outside her tiny home,
him saying, “maybe we should have…”
when it’s already too late –
the plague has struck –
other opportunists have been by –
something knobby and pink
has taken it out on my tapered waist,
foolishness has fallen on hard times –
a kiss biting, edgy,
like the gnawing of a black rat,
a hug that leaves sculptor’s hands for other things –

coarse feeling – dissolution of romance,
the jaws of night closing like regret,
heartbreak wets a pillow,
lips fight for song,
lose to tuneless entire insides –
she awakens puking.
filling a bowl,
snorting like a pregnant cow
though it’s months yet –
what a face- all that’s left of beauty-
lines and cracking,
like a mother of eight sons
worrying about war –