Poetry

Darko Eterovic

By

Allison Grayhurst

Feminine revising

               I am not ready

to empty the closet

and carry my wardrobe to a grave.

Not ready also to harvest

the hummingbird’s song, touchdown

on dark gravel –

cheek pressed against sharp rock

and no one to lift me, link arms, walk me home.

I am not ready for an erratic heart rhythm,

setting flame to the partition between that rhythm and death.

               I still have children, a lover of wedded dignity,

animals that need me in spite of my

my malfunction and heartbreak.

              Break everything ever written. The trees are naked.

Faces are naked, cursed by love. Culture is never

worthy, never a strong enough opponent against fear.

This time the spell is different – a scourging wave

upheaving the weather, ancient occupations.

              I am not ready to cross through this transformation,

over pathless territory, fluctuating temperatures, changing

more and more,

not ready for the monastery or

to watch the angels bleed.

              I am not ready to give up my home,

to bury my key under a brick

while brutes push past me, break down

the front door.

In Waiting

A dozen times I waited for

the whispered word to lay

a foundation and rise up into the sunlight –

glowing.

A thousand hours I have been

sitting, fixing the wheel, using the tools

at my disposal, subjugated to

this neophyte democracy, scheme

of constraint, holding vigil

to the past, in waiting.

In prayer, in the shower, behind broken

blinds, peering out, listening for the next move,

hearing a far-away crow, playground screams, idiot

conversations. A dozen times a dozen days playing

the sieve-taker, the monastic overseer, doing only

what the day allows, wondering where

the campfires burn and if they will ever burn

close, past midnight, for me.

Allison Grayhurst

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three of her poems have been nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, and she has over 850 poems published in more than 380 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published twelve other books of poetry and seven collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series. In 2015, her book No Raft – No Ocean was published by Scars Publications. More recently, her book Make the Wind was published in 2016 by Scars Publications. As well, her book Trial and Witness – selected poems, was published in 2016 by Creative Talents Unleashed (CTU Publishing Group). She is a vegan. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com

Some of the places my work has appeared in include Parabola (Alone & Together print issue summer 2012); Elephant Journal; Literary Orphans; Blue Fifth Review; The American Aesthetic; Agave Magazine; JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Drunk Monkeys; South Florida Arts Journal; Gris-Gris; The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry, Tuck Magazine; Storm Cellar, morphrog (sister publication of Frogmore Papers); New Binary Press Anthology; The Brooklyn Voice; Straylight Literary Magazine (print); The Milo Review; Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; The Antigonish Review; Dalhousie Review; The New Quarterly; Wascana Review; Poetry Nottingham International; The Cape Rock; Ayris; Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry; The Toronto Quarterly; Fogged Clarity, Boston Poetry Magazine; Decanto; White Wall Review.