Chasm
The chasm stretches
wider, takes in tree roots,
purple flowers and hedgehog homes.
Feeding it seems like the best thing,
but it only grows in its immensity,
never settles with what it already has.
By necessity it formed,
by decades of perpetual hammering and floods
it tore the ground, became
a mouth-hole, wide and hungering
to increase its possession of the joyfully living,
to destroy the green sprouts of creativity
seeded by a fullness without fragmentation,
self-deceit or a draining wound, continuous.
By its nature, this chasm is a long pit,
entering the underworld, releases ghosts
and gases to toxify any hope remaining.
I wish I was a bird with a great wing-span, strong
enough to fly away from its vacuous maw.
But I am human, and it wants me inside its dirty
chamber, to lick the salt from my skin
with its sharp ridged metallic tongue.
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Copyright © 2022 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “Raven Cage Zine #70” June 2022
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k1ATf0K_B97oxYPMjFHU4NBm2nLt9xrs/view
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
