Dear Editors,
I’m enclosing a selection of poetry as a submission to Record Mag.
I’ve been published recently in the Talking River, South Carolina Review and
Karamu with work upcoming in Prism International, Poem and the Evansville Review.
Sincerely,
John Grey
GUYS DO MAKE PASSES
Such thick glasses,
when pretty she can’t see,
when homely, the world shows up
though it’s more like the lens is in it,
not her face.
At her best, it’s all a blur.
Worst case scenario, everything comes into focus.
Still, her man can’t get enough of her,
removes those spectacles,
kisses the ignorant lids.
He knows something she doesn’t apparently.
It’s all to do with what he sees,
how he explains it to her.
It may come second hand
but it’s still lovely, lovely, lovely.
He’s an instrument
that would make an optometrist proud.
If he weren’t inside her,
he’d fit neatly on her nose.
A man is like a pair of glasses,
the thicker the better.
PASSIONS
If this weren’t sex
it would be anger.
If you weren’t urging me on
with soft, doughy eyes,
you’d be holding me back
with a war-like tongue.
When passion arises,
first it must choose sides.
The blood has to know
which way the battle is going.
Do we whisper? Do we shout?
Do we hug inside each other?
Do we simmer at arm’s length?
If we weren’t touching
with fingers,
we’d be touching with looks.
If not the accelerating rhythm
of together,
then the disparate percussion
of that harder kind of closeness.
We’re each in the way
of where our lives are moving.
So do we celebrate or blame?
HUNTER TYPES
The same guys
who used to hang out
at the back of the barn
boasting off all the chicks
they’d laid,
now sit around drinking in bars,
bragging about their hunting exploits.
No huge leap
from hand on knee
to lining up a big buck
in the sights,
from going for the crotch
to pulling the trigger.
One’s eyes light up when he says,
“bad the head stuffed,
hung it on the wall,”
like it was something he wished
he’d thought of years before.
