Featured Writer: John Greiner

Waiting for the Processional to Begin


In the house
where the grasshopper
        dropped dead
not seeing the generations
that were promised
        to him
I threw my hat on
the floor, and hung
my coat on the
        nail in the
         wall. I had
been thinking of bigger things;
the mystics who roam
the California hills,
and the beggars who tap
        dance on the
dirt floors in the Indiana
        back woods.
It wasn’t for me to feel
the horror, or at least
the great despair that everyone
        is supposed to feel on the other
side of the wall.
For me it was a joy to be
in the house, out of the rain,
and waiting for the snow
to fall as the seasons
were sent off on the empty
plates to the kitchen to
        be smashed on the
        linoleum floor where the grasshopper
who never saw promises fulfilled
was being dragged off by red ants.


John Greiner's poetry has previously appeared in The Spahr Street Review and The Phoenix Magazine.


Email: John Greiner

Return to Table of Contents