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Unstuck
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Of course it happened
this way – the bed was bought,
the sheets were new, and the fist
bore down like a fireball, blazing
comfort into smoke and then extinction.
Of course the memory lasted
decades, even lifetimes, bulging up through
a normal ecstasy, distorting a regular
hope of moving onward, until all passages were
claimed by that disaster and all offspring were lined
with its inevitable outcome.
Of course I never took the haunting as a gift or
a train ride through a desert, though I know that a bonfire
is not the same as that bomb, and my initials
have changed since
that day, as have the ramifications of such violent chaos.
I love beyond the library of other people’s stories,
I am not deceived by morsels of paradise promising
a meal or a fridge full of many meals.
Of course it will always hurt and memory remains
a mule on a slow decline, but peace is a whistle
beckoning me into its spell. The hurricane
has lifted and I watch children gather,
forming a community much stronger
than a one-off home.
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Copyright © 2017 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “GloMag” November 2016
http://www.joomag.com/magazine/glomag-november-2016/0326287001479836172
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Published in “The Galway Review” January 2017
Allison Grayhurst – Three Poems
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.