It’s a drab, humid August day.
An infant sucks frustratingly on a drained breast.
Dogs sweat into senselessness.
There’s no breeze.
Air, apparently, doesn’t need the exercise.
And someone tries to shrug possibilities awake
but they don’t respond.
Most shops are open but there’s no takers.
Only the bar draws attention to itself.
There are a few sidewalk strollers
but not a smile between them.
And stuck to the floor of a tenement parlor,
some kids watch TV,
a cop show that’s had a lobotomy.
The earth rolls too close to the sun
for most folks’ liking.
Sweat on the brow
is like strokes on a prison wall –
how many days it’s been,
how many to go.
An old woman lies in her bed,
near death anyhow,
helped along by the saturated oxygen.
Not even night will help much.
Dark is as before.
Only this time with the lights out.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.