Friday, 3 October 2025

Five Poems by John Grey

 






THE GUY PUMPING GAS

 

All the stories, 

all the football pennants, 

the multi-signed yearbooks, 

the cheers, the adulation, 

then silence. 

 

The labors of Hercules 

on the gridiron, 

the cheering Saturday afternoon crowds, 

were parlayed into a job pumping gas. 

 

One wife, not all the cheerleaders. 

And she left her adoration at the altar. 

 

“Fill er up,” says the voice 

from behind the wheel  

of the kind of car he’ll never own. 

 

Whatever happened to the coach’s  

“You can do this.” 

 

No writeups in the local paper. 

No handshakes from strangers. 

 

At the end of the week, 

the boss hands him an envelope, 

thin with cash. 

 

No one pays him now 

what he was worth then. 

 

 

 

IMMIGRANT 

 

You’re from Ireland 

but you’ve never set foot  

in the Emerald Isle 

nor have you ever shown  

much interest in traveling there. 

 

Your ancestors left in a famine’s wake, 

crossed the Atlantic in rickety ships, 

a village-full in a smelly hold, 
a long dark sleep  

ending in a frightening but hopeful awakening. 

 

All you know now 

was foreign to them then, 

from the maple trees 

to the raucous cities,  

the three-floor tenements 

to the raccoons rattling their trashcans. 

 

Yours is an immigrant story. 

Denial is futile. 

And you rub shoulders with an immigrant story. 

And another. And another. 

In fact, shoulders are an immigrant story. 

And you have two. 

 

 

 

BARBARA AND BARBARA 

 

You made me marvel 

at your transformation 

from overweight, stay-at-home 

 

to svelte and clubbing – 

but what I loved about you 

was how you still had time 

 

for your old self -  

that couch-veggie Barbara  

was still central to your being, 

 

and you’d have been  

content in your sweats and slippers 

had fun-loving, head-turning Barbara 

 

not staged an intervention – 

even now, you sip your drink 

up at the bar, enjoying the male company 

 

but unafraid to admit how much 

you miss your Saturday night TV routine, 

where life was lived for you  

 

and the box of chocolates you nibbled  

you bought yourself,  

wasn’t given as a deposit on your affections – 

 

guys want to be with you 

but you remember when they didn’t – 

you attract company 

 

but there was a time, 

when the crowd crowded you out – 

the old Barbara doesn’t go anywhere – 

 

the new Barbara looks in  

on her from time to time, 

finds they still have so much in common – 

 

can’t get over  

how you changed so much 

in a bid to stay the same.


  

   

CRUISING JOE 

 

Joe drives by 

a woman 

who’s strolling down  

the Main Street sidewalk, 

 

shouts out something 

so loud and garbled, 

she cannot understand 

a word. 

 

On reflection, 

maybe her figure is 

“Hotenbabe##@$” 

and her looks are 

“woofruck##spoo” 

 

but she’s not prepared 

to take Joe’s word for it. 

 

 

 

MARITAL ARGUMENT 

 

Yes, it’s a boxing match. 

Middleweight versus fly. 

It’s just that no punches are thrown. 

 

The uppercuts to the jaw  

are expressions. 

The swinging haymakers 

are words. 

 

And the noses aren’t broken. 

They’re merely out of joint. 

There are bruises,  

 but only behind the eyes. 

 

And we don’t deck ourselves out 

in wrist straps, mouth guards, 

and gloves. 

Whatever we happen to be wearing 

will do. 

 

There’s no ring. 

Merely a kitchen. 

A bedroom. 

Sometimes even 

the confined space  

of a bathroom. 

 

Nor are there crowds 

screaming for blood. 

Unless, of course,  

you count the neighbours. 

 

Thankfully,  

the bout doesn’t go on 

for round after round. 

The bell rings  

when we both wake up to 

how stupid, how insensitive, 

we’re being. 

 

Mostly, the tussle ends in a clinch. 

Warm and loving. 

It takes more than a ref 

to pull us apart.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

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