{"id":16027,"date":"2025-12-14T08:44:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T06:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=16027"},"modified":"2025-12-14T00:46:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T22:46:52","slug":"poems-by-john-grey-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=16027","title":{"rendered":"poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel of the suburbs<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel is most often seen in dresses, floral,<\/p>\n

like a walking garden, roses and daisies<\/p>\n

growing out of bright green, blue or yellow earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She dabs herself in sunscreen, to protect her<\/p>\n

petal-like skin, to shelter her from the passing years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel has a dog, a bichon, who follows her<\/p>\n

around the yard like an acolyte in the great church<\/p>\n

of the one who feeds and shelters her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She\u2019s an average cook but she sets a splendid table.<\/p>\n

The clink of plates is a dinner bell to her husband<\/p>\n

who can be found, at suppertime, crashed in the parlor<\/p>\n

after a hard day\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She once went to the door of a handsome neighbor,<\/p>\n

an artist who was typically home all day.<\/p>\n

She knocked three times but no one answered.<\/p>\n

She departed thinking that was for the best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel knows how to keep a house.<\/p>\n

And she pays the bills.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She has the radio on all day but never really listens.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s talk shows mostly, people whining in chorus<\/p>\n

with the loudmouth host.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel has four children and each have their own needs<\/p>\n

that only she can attend to.<\/p>\n

Even the boy is drawn more to her than to his father.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She kisses her man, coming and going,<\/p>\n

but just in some perfunctory way.<\/p>\n

Her passion, these days, is for the rain to stop<\/p>\n

or tradesmen to show up at the scheduled time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel seldom laughs but that does not mean she\u2019s unhappy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just that she\u2019s not happy.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a difference only she can explain.<\/p>\n

But who to? Her parents are dead. Her sister doesn\u2019t call.<\/p>\n

And that handsome artist wasn\u2019t home that one time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First breakup<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was young. Too young apparently
\nto come in from the cold. And bitter
\nit was. And the snow lay all around
\nlike this great white corpse.<\/p>\n

I was walking into the whipping wind,
\nknives in my chest to go with the ones in my back.<\/p>\n

A bus rolled by, gave me a whiff
\nof its exhaust, some engine grumble
\nto go with mine. I passed somebody
\nwhose face I didn’t even see but for the scars
\ndown both cheeks. My predecessor surely.
\nAnd what the future had in store for the one
\nwho took my place.<\/p>\n

Some homeless guy shoved his hand
\nunder my nose. Money? What’s that?
\nI wanted to trade. His bad times with life
\nfor my worse times with a woman.<\/p>\n

Did I mention how cold it was. But
\nI could put up with it. I wanted to
\nknow what it felt like to travel the byways
\nof a human heart. For an hour or more,
\nI just walked and walked, until my
\nface froze up and my legs protested, no more.
\nSo I caught a taxi home to fireplace and sympathy.<\/p>\n

Ah, that taxi\u2026my very first love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel of the suburbs   Rachel is most often seen in dresses, floral, like a walking garden, roses and daisies growing out of bright green, blue or yellow earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1822,77],"tags":[1821,1123,1393],"class_list":["post-16027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-87","category-english","tag-egophobia-87","tag-english","tag-john-grey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-4av","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16027"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16030,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16027\/revisions\/16030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}