Author Allison Grayhurst – elegy of this day being

By Raja's Insight on March 17, 2017 • ( 1 )

At the throat, brushed green like tile I shine.

The devil says “hum-drum”

as the eel struggles, futile like a wagging tail.

So many broken, hating with the hardness of crocodiles

and ants, pulling along their dead,

to consume, knowing nothing of sorrow or forgiveness.

All night I sit with my naked thighs

on the carpet, red from the heat.

What point could there possibly be

to all this pain, the death

of others, the sickness that swarms in mid-air?

Hurricanes hit the graveyards.

A gull tilts on a telephone wire. I wish to bid goodbye.

I wish for ice-cream cones in my fridge,

a handful of poppies to give some child,

any child, I meet.

I see dead eyes in my dream,

glossed with mucous and unbearable vacancy.

How do I serve when the world is so cold?

The humpbacks know this, the midgets

and also the centipedes.

I want to hide in rooms where

infants are sleeping or salamanders nurse their young.

The darkness is in me. The ground deceives me,

changes colours as I go.

Let us go now, my nightmares

and I, go under the light, go until

our heart’s blood is free-falling, exposed.

Excerpt from the book “Trial And Witness – Selected Poems”

Now Available on Amazon.com

About the Author

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 375 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published twelve other books of poetry and six 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 in December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series. In 2015, her chapbook No Raft – No Ocean was published by Scars Publications. More recently, her chapbook Make the Wind was published in April 2016 by Scars Publications. She also has a chapbook Currents pending publication in 2016 with Pink.Girl.Ink. Press. She is a vegan for the animals. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.