poetry
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a letter to the dead… Hey Dad, it’s Monday again.I’m writing from where the cold snap brokeat 39 degrees, the mountains holding their breathlike a man waiting for test results.I wonder what sky you’re under now,if heaven is a temperature,a feeling of warmth after a long chill. Mom is okay. She still watches the news,gets
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Saturday. Thirty degrees.The cold makes staying in beda theological act.Winter remembers itself here, briefly, in the mountainslike a ghost that forgotto leave completely. The heater hums a midnight hymn.I lower the dial to fifty,a small rebellion against the dark.Still, I waketo its murmur—faithful,fighting a chill I cannot name. They promise warmth next week.Santa Anas will
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A broken clock is correct twice a day. It strikes true.Its hands remain motionless.Gears, sprockets, jewels, springs—all frozen. You and me?Two pictures. The clock keeps timethe same way you and I do— twice a day,working,doing time.
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Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never
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I don’t trust white feet. If they haven’t seen the sun,how could they ever walk in my shoes?Or pretend to. Feet in robes?Think flip-flops—hardly up to the task,if you ask me. Blindfolded,they go where they’re told,peeking only at day’s end,no longer pretendingthey don’t smell,or that they’re a size smaller, larger,girl, boy. Brown, cracked,leather stretched over
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…Texas. Miles came on smooth,took the wrinkle outof speakers too tinnyfor his magic. The skyline could have been Tokyo,Manhattan, Paris,but it wasn’t—it was Pasadena. I settled for a Pasadena somewhere in Texas,not even California,sandwiched at Jake’s Baron a Taco Tuesday,35 floors of heat abovea mixed-use zoning fiasco,where business sucks bad enoughthey serve two-dollar fish tacos.
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There’s this L-shaped couch—sleeps four if you’ve run out of bedsand won’t surrender to the floor. The seller called it gold.I see beige.It belonged to someone with money—new tech, or maybe just old. It was meant for the curb last Friday,but saved three days later. Now I sit and wonderwhat asses have rested here,what secrets
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I pray I still have coffee.Find a pod.Plop and push—she percolateswarm brown juice. Grab a enameled steel mug with a handle,but make the oats in a white bowl first—microwaves and steel don’t mix.I’m sure there’s a dead cat somewherewhen I tried.Pour them in after,add blueberries and walnuts because I read they’re good for you.But blueberries
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I thought how you thought of yourself as the moon— brilliantly white light, a dot of hope in eternal black. But even your light wasn’t yours. Reflection. And the howling below—that was real. Lobo, me. Smooth surface. You could trick yourself into seeing a smile there. But the truth: scars skip the surface, sink steeply—pieces
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“Come closer—let the room learn our names from your breath on my neck.” Where are your lips—with someone else,or only with the idea of someone else?It’s strange how the imaginedcan cut so precisely,like a scene edited to shine. Where is your touch,those secret letters you trace on my back?You smile when I ask,“What did that
BB Grey--musings 