Bed ruffled.
Stink rises from the city dump.
Old magazines stacked on chairs.
Cranes like giant steel grasshoppers
move in among the derelict brick weeds.
Broken umbrella sailing in from Jersey City.
Waves bring the joy
of syringes and failed boats.
The morning hums,
I’m power grids or I’m nothing.
A yawn takes up where sleep left off.
JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit, with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Coal City Review, the Coe Review, and Gargoyle.
