Surrogate Dharma
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I didn’t think I would get lost
or be chained to a contractual victory.
I thought a grain would grow,
become a solid garden. Fires would come, then
firefighters. I would be testifying about
the worth of what survived.
That is not what happened. I fell prey
to the propaganda of affirmations,
to the volume of control I could contain.
My dream dropped out of me
like a miscarriage. I hoped I could forget:
Tie my shoes, zip up a coat
and kiss the shelter I have. Bridges here and there –
they are not mine to travel.
Vinegar keeps getting injected into my bones,
replacing the marrow with
its potent clarity. Do you see? I am getting older.
It will be over
and I have to be able to say I served well.
My mouth opens and folds like a fledgling wing.
People pass – each one a violin note, a digit, a reluctant
panting pitch. Conversations are ash.
I don’t like living in these elements, my neck
stretched up into the dense middle
of a monsoon. Let me climb,
dragging this dead beast behind me.
Let me live where my father went to school,
on a Himalayan peak.
I am not a petal. My courage is fickle, it fortifies or fades,
dependent each day on mutual obligatory infatuation.
I can’t keep pretending:
The sun is strong. The night is strong. I am not stronger.
I am in this hovel with my lamp, tasting metal
of varying textures –
rusted, gold, and other star-erupted symbols –
greeting obscurity, broken toenails
I can’t be bothered to trim. How many rooms, my God?
How much waiting and walking, and the fish?
I could be a fish. Make me
one of those – sliding about, weaving
with one full-body stroke
through a lush intricate terrain, mastering
a juicy undergrowth.
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Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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Published in “Occulum” August 2017
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First published in “SpinRock Reader Lit Forum” October 2015
http://spinrockreader.blogspot.ca/2015/10/surrogate-dharma-poem-by-allison.html
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First published in “Surrogate Dharma” e-chapbook Kind of a Hurricane Press
http://barometricpressures.blogspot.ca/2014/10/surrogate-dharma-allison-grayhurst.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DuKJaq66CldFQtSDd1aTBncm8/view
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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