Andrej Bilovsky

Business Trips

My dearest trustworthy man.
My nerves are wracked.

Not wealthy,
only moderately sexy,
but untrue?
            never.
(Despite the warnings)

Your undertaking
is to fulfill my oldest dream.
And yet, there are all these business trips.

A coincidence or not?
Your cheery Chicago conference
and my San Francisco draining away.

I’m like a funeral in three-quarter time.
Where are the mourners?

Maybe I should make lists.
Or come to terms with my body.

But then there’s this relationship
and that brutal law of diminishing returns.

As for my head…
each one of my thoughts refutes the one before.

I’m beginning to think that
love is a flawed premise.

An explosion
where the sudden shock
compromises the long term harm.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a poet and performance artist. Former editor of  Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

John Grey

After the Argument

Forget the words.
They’ll be rocks by morning.

The place
(the bed in this instance)
prefers the body
to the tongue.

Submerge yourself
in space and time
and tomorrow will welcome you
with dog-bark and foliage.

No lost ponies.
All trails sure underfoot.
The fire thawing the cold
or the cool turning back the heat.

Sediment
will look like crystal.
Tears, mere side-paths
on the way to knowing him.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.