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Message to Mary by John Grey

Posted on May 14, 2017 by publisher in
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Narrated by John Grey

Message to Mary by John Grey

illustration by Sue Babcock

 

The owl hoots for the end-time of woman.
It flaps its vast wings’ thunder over the trees. 
Familiar hills split into entrances 
wide enough for a herd of wildebeests.
By the time the dead pass on through,
they’re nothing more 
than a potlatch of dainty silver bones.

Maybe an angel shape will shine through the willows.
And a soul will be in the ascendant—
a climax entrancingly serene.
What else can we hope for?
Besides the industrious worms, the triumphant weevils,
cellars rich with the agony of new growth.

From piercing steeples to ivy wrapping around the bridges,
sparrows in thickets and a solitary fox cry,
a body descends to the very bottom of our well-wishes, 
becomes a terrible sadness to add to all remembered deaths.
At such moments, it seems as if all we have loved is lost.

So Mary, whom among these mourners are you?  
Whose bright face separates itself from that sea of mournful expression?
Who is nimble enough in emotion to smile
a lifetime before these others do?
I am waiting. I am watching.
I crave permission to go on from here.

 

Author Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sheepshead Review, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Poem and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Our next issue will be published on February 1, 2021. We will open submissions for poems and stories on November 1, 2020.

Liquid Imagination

Issue 33 May 2017

Stories

Introduction by Edwin Riddell

Amber Light by Maureen Bowden

Sorry, Sis by James Gallagher

The Room with a Hundred Lighters by Nicholas Stillman

The Old Stoner’s Boner by Ray Prew

Pyrophilia by DL Shirey

Klinghofer’s Preview by Jeffery Scott Sims

Sparkles and Sunshine by S.J. Budd

The Red Maple by Douglas Kolacki

Poems

Message to Mary by John Grey

In Noir Shadows by Bruce Boston and David E. Cowen

The woman from the end of the paved road by Burgess Needle

Lot’s Second Wife by Jennifer Moore

The Stone Garden by Deborah L. Davitt

My mother ate some stars in wonderland by St. Ifa, a High Priest of Ogunden

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