Last Days in a Hotel Room / The Ghosts of Fall by John Grey

Last Days in a Hotel Room

I’m alone in a hotel room
with peeling wallpaper,
a seascape print,
little bits of soap
and a half-used shampoo bottle.

Did I mention peeling skin,
a print of Goya's
“Saturn Devouring His Son”
little bits of human liver
and a half-drunk flask of arsenic.

Or peeling facade,
an x-ray of my cancerous insides,
and a half-used,
no, a little-used right kidney.

I'm looking at the clock
to see how much time I've got
until checkout.
And I'm listening to my heart
in case I'm just imagining
that clock.



The Ghosts of Fall

We are the ghosts of falling leaves,
taking our shape from the downward drift
of mottled, crisp and crackly death,
crunching noiselessly on those already fallen,

Cloistered away from the invidious heat of secular summer,
we emerge in Fall, in air more to our ephemeral liking,
The sky is almost as pale as our skin.
We’re emboldened by the long bitter nights.

We blow against your windows.
Press fog-like faces deep into the glass.
We are contagion fresh from the chill of hell.
Without fingers trembling, knees knocking,
you cannot accommodate our presence.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and International Poetry Review.