Chess Lives | John Grey

 

Chess Lives | John Grey

Ten painted boards on ten stone tables
are scattered throughout the park,
These are little battlegrounds
where men and women hunker down on hard marble benches,
heads on elbows, plotting, ceaselessly plotting,
bodies still as winter ponds,
all thinking confined 
to within the boundaries of the playing field.

From game to game,
it’s the same sixty-four red and black squares,
arcane wooden sculptures huddled at each end,
or taking pot-shots at each other in the busy center,
or, at the hush of battle's end,
falling in with war-hardened survivors
to batter a deposed sovereign.

Now and then,
a thought is rerouted to the fingers
and a piece is moved.
It could be a pawn 
thrust out into no-man’s land.
Or a cagey knight pouncing sideways.
Or the bishop, long and lean,
policing the diagonals.
Or the rook, squat and turreted,
bludgeoning its way forward
once its own men make way.

Or the queen,
serene and all-powerful,
the oldest living feminist.
Or the king, more prey than monarch,
stumbling one space at a time
to get out of harm’s way. 

It's late October.
Wind picks up.
The trees are beginning to shed.
“Checkmate!” cries a voice.
A ruler is toppled
and a few leaves fall.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Plainsongs.

 

  Mentions of the Month
Below is a poem that stood out among the wonderful submissions we received in the month of August, 2026:
• “The Urban Wild” by Anna Philips

—Selected by Sharisa Aidukaitis