RUSLAN GARREY - POEMS

Ruslan Garrey is a Russian-born poet, now based in Rodenbach, Germany.  He previously founded the North Fork Oklahoma Writers and contributed to Short Order Poems on the streets of OKC.  His work has appeared in Rune Bear, Redheaded Stepchild, The Nude Bruce Review, and Former People, among others.

The Motorcycle That Ran Over My Grandmother
​

Eulogy for a grandfather I hardly knew:
A large cup of bitter tea we shared
No pictures on the wall because grandma burned all the photo albums
Maybe the apartment I remembered wasn’t the place to recall you in
You lived in a cabin in the center of the busy Russian city
No running water
Walking to a camera film factory through dirty Kazan snow
Kicking the sleet off of your creased, muddy boots
Bathing in chemicals that one day broke down your body
Crying for you wife, who died a victim of a motorcycle
Not stopping, the two wheeled murderer rode away through the courtyard
                                                                                     He did not stop
And you didn’t stop:
The shadow widower,
Smiling with effort, getting up off the carpeted couch
Atih
You would grin as you bounced me on your knee
Atih
You spoke in tartar words that slid like mud off my
Atih
You were more than a ghost, and you will always be on that-
Laying place
To be comfortable
Drunk, though I never saw you drink
The toy dog with the Velcro legs that hugged me
Smelling like something like vodka and grey childhood snow
 

Late Autumn
​

​The last, lasting light
Rings down from the street lamp
Red, like the sound of a church bell
And it is somehow early autumn in mid-January
I strain my ear to hear the hollow knell again
And improbably, I hear the deep echo of red light on dead leaves
It is autumn, a very long mossy autumn beneath my feet
 
Deep in the hospital wards
Someone is singing
And high on the tower
Another is climbing out the window
Taking only a chair
The song escalates
The singer’s pitch quivers and falls
A person is sitting on the roof,
Counting stars and humming along 

6000 Times
​

​6,000 times I’ve written you letters
And all I got back was empty parcels
You sent back air, bare paper, empty bottles
 
You sent things to yourself, then emptied the package and forwarded them to me
You whited out whole letters, except the Dear, ____ and the Sincerely, _____
And left them in my mailbox
You sent me e mails that looked like spam so my filter would delete them
 
But I knew you were out there, somewhere alone, feverishly writing
Memoirs scrawled on sand you wouldn’t dare put to paper
And tears you wouldn’t let fall from your cheek onto photographs
You were only islands and gusts, tiny polaroid coconuts
 
I wish you and hunt you, to welcome you home
Wherever you’re thrown
Let me reconcile you with you the photographs’ age
Please come off the page

 

Companions that Haunt
​

​Trembling and shuddering
The tremulous huddle close
Bright eyes gleaming
Hiding from the fog and dark
Awake in fear and unable to know:
These are the things that touch souls
                     As they sleep
The somnolent ghosts of the dead
Who are embodied in flesh made of fireflies
Traversing the misty gullies
In the deep Germanic forests
That can only be described as black
Or other, filled with forgotten dryads
They mourn the light of day
Decaying in fallen logs and in heaps of brush
These are the souls that live but forget
Cannot remember their breathing
Mild dew drops run down the bridges of their noses
 
To walk these paths at night is a travail
Invasive spirits mist through the cloak
Enmeshing their forlorn thoughts
With those of the drowsy traveler
Inviting him to the great fire at the heart of the woodland
 
The heart races at each turn,
At each creaking branch, at each sighing oak
This journey is not a lonely one
It is filled with companions that haunt
 

Mushroom Love
​

​Love cultivates from a stray spore
Caught somewhere in a knee-bone or elbow
But grows into the organs
And rogue marrow
Until it is in the tissues
It is a sickness that becomes untenable to live without
A touching affliction that draws the infected to merge
To embrace warmly under blankets
It brings bodies together to huddle for warmth
And when the infected are apart it withers
But lives on, immutable, unspeaking yet wordy, crawling
Producing heat and sores
It manifests in mushrooms on the skin that are easily knocked over
But it is there, begging to be nurtured with sweat and milk
The sacred wound the we are not sure how to live without
 
Touching fingertip to rib,
This must be the spot, I think
The very spot I could grow into you
I feel my fingers melt into your side
Lazy, you reach to my hip and flick off a mushroom
With a wet pock