"Bad Neighborhood" and "First Thing in the Morning"

Bad Neighborhood

a big black savage dog
is chained to the axle
of a rusty Ford
in the overgrown front lawn
of a dilapidated house
on a dead end street

if it ever gets free,
it will grab you
by the leg,
the arms,
and make you
live there

 


 

First Thing in the Morning

I’m like a photograph
waiting to expose.
I rub my eyes,
yawn my way
into a recognizable form.

Amazing,
I wake shapeless, thoughtless,
amorphous, a blur,
and yet you know me
already.

 

 

John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, La Presa and California Quarterly.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Monday, July 2, 2018 - 11:24