James Grinwis

A Little Smoke

There was a space before the other space, a lurid twenties German movie hiding in the smog, a mime that was upon one, a torment, a dog sniffing a home out, a grown man playing with a power ranger action figure. Let the wood speak. The sorrowful still dream. About the gravelly dirt, the ascensions once known. Wondering if, at the top, there’s nostalgia for dust. And whether at the bottom there’s anything.

Roadkill Poem

I walked past a dead fox.
It was smashed in the emergency lane-less road.
C conjured herself out of the shattered
bits of its skull.
The magic of hiking kidney pine forests.
Wives are digesting baby magazines and New Yorkers.
A woman with a wedding band
hand in hand with a man without one,
having taken it off or just by inclination
of not having one.
I wonder what C is doing.
The terrain and the lights are sharp.
It was a day of polite nods,
a place in which new things occur
and occur.

James Grinwis lives in Florence, Massachusettes. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, and he is founding editor of Bateau Press. contact