Miss Alma
By John Grey
She stared out of the attic window,
a woman dead to the world
but not entirely in the after-life.
There was something
in her gaunt expression,
a grinning memory
of unmitigated evil
sagged on all sides
by haggard realty.
Yet a discipline like devilry,
once learned is never forgotten,
no matter how much the bones creak,
heart falters, mind crumbles
“If only you had known then,”
her parched lips hiss.
“You wouldn’t be around
to know me now.”
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
