John Greiner

Plungers

Flossed my teeth

in the hot tub

thinking of my days

traveling by train

with the terracotta

            princesses

naked as the fantasies

of a much more libertine

                        day

before

the dogs

and

the rats

            dropped dead in

            the Mississippi

after a short summer swim

To blow off steam

by a campfire

riverside

                        should become a fashion

better known

it is so much more rewarding

than the hunts

that Artemis led the girls on

sometimes

I talk about the girls

who I have loved

they all live on

in cardboard boxes

kept in the confectioner’s shop

                                    dark as the cake

                                    St. John

            sent to Theresa of Avila

an ecstasy

worthy of Bernini

art and religious devotion

come from the same core

                                    mined in the coal mines

of America

holding

on

by

a

thread

                                                such plungers

of the depths never get the proper compensation

in spite of the union, for a century, calling

                                    for a better wage

that century is gone

and soon there will no longer be a need

                                                for negotiations

for all of the players will be forgotten

A Week of Insect Suicide

A week of insect suicide

all the buzzing done

clear air and no mosquito bites

I revel in the ashes of the honeyed ham

the slops of a whole history

so don’t talk to me about the century

shoot off your mouth with a clean scream

the dentist dreams

                             of all the holes

                             in the head

this quiet is worthy of a last winter

a stop to all the tongues feeling free

                                                click clack

I watch the clock

                                                        tick

all the talk is of red dresses

in empty rooms windowless

the electric has been disconnected

Coffin Grounds

Scaled down to the coffin grounds

drunk on the heavy

                                    pound

the heart’s last beats

choke and gargle

nothing more than the bad breath

            of a new day

black heap on a white sheet

blank stare burned out

so much to say in the sight

                                    down

once all the bereft scanned

the newspapers of the no more

we’ll come to a conclusion

that you’ll never know of

but you always knew that

River Walker

On the dock dirty city

on the deck endless ocean

in the open

            on the old man’s back

            the river walker

wishing for a hot tub adventure

fall shy away from eyes

smoke rings of forgotten cigarettes

they all want to take my breath away

skin shrink wrapped

pretty sight thought

Upper East Side

Sunday afternoon

 see the skyscrapers while you sink

                                    a wondrous sight

Someone Must Tap Their Toes Here

Hurled out in the noon

                        copped

to a summertime of bleeding

in shoes

while not wanting

to wait for the next train to arrive

                        run

and get to a place

not necessary

but there all the same

someone must tap their toes here

while the windows leak

                        last century laments

that topped the charts

            hearing

some grandmother must have weeped

in girlish days

            on the beach of some sea

            where the sand is the stuff

            of travel brochures

bare feet

race towards drowning waves.

John Greiner is a writer and visual artist living in New York City.  Greiner's work has appeared in Antiphon, Sand Journal, Otoliths, Survision, Sein und Werden, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Value and numerous other magazines. His books of poetry include In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky (Arteidolia Press), Circuit (Whiskey City Press), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press) and Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press).  His collaborative work with photographer Carrie Crow has appeared at the Tate Liverpool, the Queens Museum and in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg.