John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Hawaii Pacific Review, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Clade Song.
Andy And Maria
the baby is brown
the baby is damp
the baby is clenched to her chest
but apparently too loose
always hold the baby
by its chest
his mother would say
never hold the baby
by the arms and legs
now he lives with a woman
who can never hand the baby off fast enough
a woman who sits up nights watching
the neutering rays of an ancient television set,
who keeps head-files on everyone she knows
like she's the FBI
every lip suck every nose nuzzle every eye rolling
he lives with her
she's drink in a time of dry lonely moments
she’s pain in the ass
but gorgeous in the shadows
and the shelter of sheets and blankets
not so much when affected by
the nag-virus
or when he’s pinned down by
the dull rhythm of her voice
in ordinary conversation
(and he’s next door to the apartment of the
Interstellar pack-rat in blue sweats
blue beard yellow newspapers leaking out the windows
who lives amid the annihilation
of all his smelly dead dogs
who wants to be part of one
crowded spaceship on course for Andromeda
sometime next July) - that’s just an aside -
now he is in hock to Mussolini the landlord
and his National-Enquirer-reading wife
to the torn curtains
to the lumpy sofa
to the cigarette burns in the rug
the nuked food in the stove’s recesses
the fist caverns in the wall
he is in hock to his genitals when he’s scouring
through the on-line sex-sideshow in search of the
midget and the bearded lady
or when he’s reading old copies of Rolling Stone
for the stories on bands
radio won’t play anymore
he’s in hock to pride and avarice and lust and...
but who's keeping score
and his ex bawling on the telephone because
her lazy dim-wit husband's been seduced by another man
(the asshole next door is rising up out of dark pits
of excrement with a placard warning of the
Almighty Octopus Nation of the Merciless Computer Skunks)
and people from Nebraska who don't know
he gives shitty directions
and Art the cook in the diner next door
whose idea of expanding his menu options
is to diligently wipe the sweat from his brow
and onto the plate
it's this woman he can't do without
and when he does try to do without
events lick the back of him like a postage stamp
and fasten him to a letter
and then mail him right back to her
now why can't I do it alone, he’s asking
why can't I vote myself out of the great autocracy of need
it's people mostly it's people who show up everywhere
like muzak like flesh and bone muzak and, more than that
it's things it's things like cell phones with their invisible people
on the other end it's things like unwashed underwear
or anything common as muck and jism and sperm
and bathrooms and death and politics and bodies
in the bed beside him imported from some island
by a combination of his penis and her smile and
freaky guitar playing and the blatant hunger
wherever he has a body part and the cavities
in his head and heart and the booze with its
round or flat bottles of liquid assassins
and the sheer debauchery of romantic stuff
and the fact that of all the wishes
he's had about women he never once wished they all be
mothers
it's the baby
which is not even his baby
her features none of his
the offspring
of another’s mattress springs
there really is no way out
not when his rooms are stuffed with her
a shopping list is pasted to his eyes
his hand is up her shirt
and their private crazies are a match made
in Dante’s Inferno
and sure as hell
not when
the baby is brown
the walls of the rooms are brown
the sidewalk trees are brown
the color of her heaving belly is brown
is brown is brown is brown is brown
everything naked and useless is brown
it's been raining brown rain
and brown is at the center of the network
like souls and theories
newscasters from the front desk
at the peace of mind studios
who inform him that loneliness
is closing down
for good
to be replaced by
the grinning-in-his-lap baby
the here-you-take-her-for-a-while baby
a citizen’s arrest baby
always hold the baby
by its contents
his mother would say
never hold the baby
by the arms
never love a woman
for her looks
it ain't easy to pick up on what's inside he says
not when he’s the one
holding the baby
and people stop and gawk
at slivers of cuteness,
plump flesh in all directions.
new life puking
on the old
down down
the front of his clean white shirt
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