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TWO Poems
John GREY



SWAMP SONG


Late afternoon appears to these dead eyes.
Sun sinks into marsh, the octaves of a boyish
mind remembered. Osprey links up with her
nest, moves in substance fine as feathers,
sleek as bone, sleeps beside the harp, conceals
herself in darkness. Cormorant, at a fatal moment,
stops clocks in all directions, frays the strong
song in its grip. Copperhead of such beautiful music
and yet the space around it grown so cold.




STEADY NOW


and here’s the elevated wooden trail
             the hollow echo of my footsteps
ever the orphaned brain, the abandoned heart-strings
the only solid footing means so much to me
it is the dove, the divinity, the silken light—
I want to hang from storm clouds, above thick reeds,
in ignorance of body and my mind’s madness 
across a land of shifting unsteady surfaces
as light falls, youth ends, sun’s trapped furiously
            in a gator’s jaws




John GREY is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined LifeStudio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.  




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Partner to a press called Tenement, Hotel is a publications series for new approaches to fiction, non fiction & poetry & features work from established & emerging talent. Hotel provides the space for experimental reflection on literature’s status as art & cultural mediator. 




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