Sometimes

You, the dance
in me
as we touch, making
a curved space
of folds and arches,
too tired of reality
to notice
its absence.

Misplant

Blown by chance
the roots
never took in the soil in this
desert warped and wasted
on the southern coast.
The sick grass I ran through
my fingers soaked in
poisoned air under a sky
where a million cars coughed.

The nights there washed
in floods of light
illuminating fingers
that crept like snakes
on tumblers and wineglasses.
Each hissed frantic
in endless games
of power and privilege.

Those that kept alive
devoured hallucinations
on the rocks and lived
in hollow spaces
with polished doors.
When they died
their bodies hardened
in a newly terrifying sky,
spirits exploding
like wound watches
leaving legacies
of springs and wheels.

Later, I escaped.
I took a few clumps
of the stray grass and
planted them
far away from the place.
They sprouted like poetry.

Nightscape

    Reflected in water
    the moon's skin
brushes against the earth.

It makes night frogs
luminous
in the dark streams.

The streams stay invisible
except for whispers
over smooth stones.

We whisper
under the abyss of the night sky
in the trances of the shown moon.

The trances awaken us
like vertical slit eyes of snakes
that open to see by moonlight.

They hunt the luminous frogs
in the invisible streams
among the whispers
under the moon
and call the abyss of the night sky
home.

Greg Gregory makes his living working in educational media although his first love has always been language and the printed word. He was raised in Los Angeles, lived in the San Francisco Bay area for awhile, then moved to Sacramento. He loves the seasonal changes here, especially in the bird-rich marshes and rice fields that still haven’t yet been developed into subdivisions. He has been published in California Quarterly, Rosebud, Windsor Review (Canada), PDQ, Amherst Review, Poetry Nottingham (England), and others.

Email: Greg Gregory

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