D.A. Gray – Writers Resist

Stop Light

By D.A. Gray

“Embrace diversity.
Unite —
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those that see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
or be destroyed.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

The light works for now.

We’re stopped at an intersection
beside the Walgreens and its half-full
parking lot, safely in our lanes,
east – west traffic moving steadily
across our path. The barber shop
across the street, quiet,
its door opening once in this minute
of stillness. No walls coming down
to separate us, just a belief in order
that’s still holding this moment
on the smooth black-topped road,
and the smooth skin of our cars
stays smooth because we believe
for now, that’s the way they should.

A shock jock is screaming over
the radio waves about givers and takers.

A truck races through a yellow light
with a confederate flag streaming.

So many would destroy this rather
than see it shared. I’ve deployed
to third world countries, aware
of how long it took to build this.
I’ve guarded voting lines, aware
of how hard to make sure
everyone knows this matters,

and guarded trucks so the road
crews could lay the asphalt.

I’ve come back knowing what we have
to lose – and it’s not enough when
we’re electing people who rise
to power just to watch it burn.

The light changes. We may move
forward, only if everyone on this road
notices the light and knows it means forward.

D.A. Gray is the author of Contested Terrain (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press, 2011). His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Review, Writers Resist, Comstock Review, Still: The Journal and Wrath-Bearing Tree among others. He holds Masters Degrees from The Sewanee School of Letters and Texas A&M-Central Texas. A veteran, Gray now teaches, writes, and lives in Central Texas.

Photo by wu yi on Unsplash.

The Spectators

By D.A. Gray

We’d grown thin during the pandemic.

I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and lock all three locks behind us, and turn on Box—the friend who understood us.

We would post jokes about lost drivers on Robertson Road, the coworker who couldn’t seem to do anything right, Texans and their beer hands that kept them from reaching the turn signal, or the lady in her bunny slippers at the H-E-B.

It was funny then, right? We meant no harm.

Faces from our angle seemed forever stuck in a moment of worry, or maybe lostness.

When the pandemic hit we noticed more in the mirror—or less—the way we almost disappeared from the side was cause for slight alarm. We vowed to eat better, to exercise. Then we sat down with Box, who loved us as we were and flashed pictures of pets, of stories curated for us.

Anyway, there’s still this pandemic. But it’s been so long since you’ve taken in a game.

In the stands, we notice faces frozen, you might say with “pasted on smiles.” Or frowns. Or maybe screams. Who knows. Everyone is silent here.

We’ve forgotten how to enjoy a simple game.

But the game itself is good, right? Slow moving, sure. But we watch the strategy unfold. There are outfield shifts, signals from the sides, pitcher and catcher in their esoteric talk. We never noticed when we used to talk.

Now the action has us glued to our seats.

And the sky has become an orange haze.

Players run through the motions. The stop and start drama, the overthinking, the occasional sprint after a collision of hickory on cowhide. Someone yells “Yes” as the ball drops onto the green grass.

Here the orange sky gets brighter.

Back home, Box tuned to something more pleasant. I hope it’s just conspiracy talk.

My skin is feeling thin, papery, which has me a little unsettled. My chances of surviving a combustible world were not good before this development.

What was that? Another crack of the bat. Maybe. No one’s moving. Perhaps the crack of timber from a nearby hill.

We keep watching. No one’s speaking to each other anymore and the faces seem to carry a look of perpetual anxiety. I think of the time we could have spent talking but never did. We assumed those around us were nothing but cardboard cutouts of something we feared. Now I fear we’ve become that, while watching other things.

And outside this place an orange menace lumbers—I can’t ignore it anymore—slow and clumsy, but steady. Its fingers—it seems to be feeding—grabbing at everything, as if our silence were consent.

D.A. Gray is the author of Contested Terrain (2017). His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Writers Resist, Comstock Review, Still: The Journal and Wrath-Bearing Tree among others. He holds Master’s degrees from The Sewanee School of Letters and Texas A&M-Central Texas. Gray now teaches, writes, and lives in Central Texas.

Photo credit: Eric Drost via a Creative Commons license.

Heretic Hymn from the Pandemic

By D.A. Gray

One morning the cats who once
Crept up to our doors – stopped.
For a time the bird’s voices grew louder
Then they, too, disappeared.

We prayed on command. We were sure
The symbols would save us.
Leaving the church we made stops
At every store that promised
A cure – the backup spells of old
Superstition – just to be sure.

A man in our town has been chosen
To head the response task force.
Each day he offers a spot of wisdom.
‘The worst you can do,’ he says,
‘is panic.’ He bows before the camera.
His hair is bright white
Like a horseman from an old tale.

Most of us simply carried on.

When the least of these grew ill
We sang solemn hymns
This time to our neighbors, and the dead
We had never met. We were begging
Forgiveness for averting our eyes, away
From them and toward the sky.

I saw my parents begin to shrink, still thinking
Tragedy could be beaten with piety.
The louder they prayed the smaller
They grew. One day my father’s
Eyes jolted open. He was small enough now
He could see it coming.

Keep calm. Be civil. After the funeral we pulled
Out the box of aphorisms
Which was always here waiting our return
In case of emergency.

If we listen we can hear the sounds of hooves,
Really the sounds of breath rasping,
The remaining beastly sounds, bringing the end
Of the tale galloping closer
Like any metaphor – if you believe it too much.

D.A. Gray’s poetry collection, Contested Terrain, was recently released by FutureCycle Press. His previous collection, Overwatch, was published by Grey Sparrow Press in 2011. His work has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Appalachian Heritage, The Good Men Project, Writers Resist, and Literature and the Arts, among many other journals. Gray holds an MFA from The Sewanee School of Letters and an MS from Texas A&M-Central Texas. Retired soldier and veteran, the author writes and lives in Central Texas.

“Four Horsemen” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860.

Four Lights

By D.A. Gray

The focus on the yellow sign, dwarfing its black
letters, allows us to move on – to return
to our regularly programmed night of silence.

For a day the gold box burns in the mind,
the darker letters WAFFLE HOUSE hang
like ash. A tragedy happened, someone says,

then turns the channel. The focus on a shooter’s
mental health lets us grieve for the sorry
state of things. We can’t even say it – murderer.

We let the rain soaked streets of Nashville
carry the grief down, leaving us our silence.
Gather enough silence and we, whose angst

drowns the mother, the father weeping
on the screen, can cover ourselves. Gather enough
silence and a city can bleach itself great again.

No one wants to see the faces and each alone
in silence find an image, a gold sign whose black
letters have cooled. Still something burned once.

It’s the eyes that interrupt the silence
cherished more than the heaving chest
witnessed with the sound turned down.

We who’ve never felt the rush of air
through a hole in our sides, stand quietly
beneath the fanned leaves of a maple tree

relishing the fact it holds back the rain.
It is the silence of a lone wolf hiding, quieter
than the star, the worker, the athlete, the artist.

We belong to the silence that keeps prejudice
hidden in the darkness of letters, behind a gilded
sign, hiding from the imagination

in a place, someone might say, terror lives.

Photo credit: bradhoc via a Creative Commons license.

Pantoum for ‘Real America’

By D.A. Gray

The men we knew have long since passed.
Their bodies still fill the broadest doorways
but something in their eyes, their voice has gone
replaced by a rage that crackles over the radio.

Their bodies still fill the broadest of doorways
and their eyes follow us, from great distances.
There’s only the rage that crackles over the radio
where once warm greetings welcomed us.

The old men’s eyes follow us — from a great distance.
Maybe we just remember our small town wrong
or only think the greetings warm that welcomed us
and not simply suspicion in code.

Maybe we just remember our small town wrong
the way bared teeth appear to be a smile sometimes.
Perhaps it’s simply suspicion in code
or we forgot how far we went to save our way of life.

Bared teeth, from here, looked like smiles sometimes.
Tales across the table — the sum of what we knew.
We never questioned the myth of our way of life.
It was simpler, those images in black and white.

Stories across the table were the sum of what we knew.
Now there’s only rage crackling over the radio.
It was simpler then, reality in black and white —
but the minds we knew have long since passed.

D.A. Gray is the author of the new collection of poems, Contested Terrain (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and one previous collection, Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press, 2011). His poetry has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Kentucky Review, The Good Men Project, Still: The Journal, War, Literature and the Arts among many other journals. Gray recently completed his graduate work at The Sewanee School of Letters and at Texas A&M-Central Texas. A retired soldier and veteran, the author writes and lives in Central Texas with his wife, Gwendolyn. Visit his website at www.dagray.net.

Image credit: DonkeyHotey via a Creative Commons license.