Voice

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Allison Grayhurst

Voice

When you talk it is not

a shimmering sensation or

a delicate fluttering of

nature’s delicate best. Days

are not here like you are –

an open sewer grate, a crushed

locust. They are smudged and flat

as a textureless dream.

Helmets worn. Grievers

with their now-permanent-grief etched

under their fleshy eyes, checkbones and chins.

I buy buttered pastries, leave them

by their doors. I hear your voice.

You are trying to reach me with an old painter’s words

of resignation and reluctant wisdom – words

I cannot make use of.

The dead evergreen in my front yard will not revive.

Like me, and these things I clung to, it must be replaced

with something of less substance, of more obvious beauty,

like a red rose bush, birdbath or sundial. Or,

I could leave it there, brown and dry – a monument

to what was once lush, gorgeously plump, once withstanding

winters, the heat of global-warming summers, green,

wondrous against my window.

I could walk faster than this, chat with the neighbours.

But I won’t. Because nothing is here but you, only,

and my feet can’t find the motivation to pick up pace.

You talk. My aura is a smog-filled season

where your sun’s rays barely seep through. Days

with stones in my stomach, rubbing against one another,

pressing their hard weight into places.

I have no drug to ease my longing. Will it be long? Years?

Will I make it through to the Fall?

Do you have more to say? Say it then, differently.

I can’t go on repeating,

where nothing shifts but these stones,

sharp-surfaced, blocking my intestinal tract, pressing

with each step, demanding acknowledgment, denied

release, a minimal hope

for redemption.

No Raft - No Ocean

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

First published in “Wax Poetry and Art Magazine, Volume 3, Number 5”, June 2014

Wax poetry 1 Wax poetry 2 wax poetry 3 wax poetry 4

wax poetry voice 1 wax poetry voice 2 wax poetry voice 3

http://waxpoetryart.com/issues/0305/allisongrayhurst.html

http://waxpoetryart.com/issues/0305/allisongrayhurst_voice.html

voice 1 voice 2

Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,” Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.

Endure

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Allison Grayhurst

Endure

the brilliant fractures,

repetitions of wars and slaughterhouse squeals.

Once more, brought to the tower, looking

over – so easy to sway and not think of the

consequences. So easy to crash the wine bottle

over the piano stand and stop the bad music playing, forgetting

there are so many things better left unexplored,

like feelings that extinguish boundaries, that are soft as

loneliness or under-appreciation. Sunglasses always worn.

Endure, wait for fullness or for medication,

wait for that one hour to be adorned by another’s desire,

embroidered into another clothes – when wounds and failures,

(for that hour) are reduced, overpowered.

Moon mountains and muscles, patterns build life. God,

there is creation without you – there is everything –

grandfathers, butterflies and sand dunes.

Unpredictability is glorified. Minds rejoice,

gaining rules, workable explanations. Endure,

why must I? Why, when denied

a boat, a bed, a simple wild hand roaming? Love is absurd.

Love is you God, and you are outside of all this,

waiting for an invitation,

tender as a new mother’s nipple, flowing.

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

Surrogate Dharma chapbook 1

http://barometricpressures.blogspot.ca/2014/10/surrogate-dharma-allision-grayhurst.html?spref=fb

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-DuKJaq66ClMlFIWWU5cTY2RTQ/view

First published in “Nostrovia!” and in “Nostrovia! Milk and Honey Siren poetry anthology”

http://www.nostroviatowriting.com/4/post/2012/11/endure-by-allison-grayhurst.html

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

The Book

Posted on April 14, 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

The Book

Inside, spending all my coins, rejoicing

on ephemeral longing, on a lustful inhale

for physical redemption.

Hidden in the pages, I am hidden

at four in the morning, bathing in perfection,

lifting into heights that obscure drudgery.

Thoughts are shapes that float as shadows,

hardly solid like butter left out of the fridge.

Cages unraveling and houses cleaned of cobwebs.

Between soft book covers freedom kisses explicitly,

candy-ices without embarrassment.

Hanging on hinges, on barely glanced-at walls,

I gather my vision in the grass, paint on the

bones of another’s life – beautiful bones and hallways

of many feet walking and swishing bathrobes.

In the book I can face forward and never fear rejection,

I can shower sensuously in warm rhythms,

tied to the stirring light of early summer.

Love between these diary covers is not just canvass

or thick hues that merge and make a middle, it is where I will

at last know another’s body as I know my own, be protected

from the torrential pawing pierce of middle-age loneliness.

Inside the book, you are under me like a bed of lavender bushes,

there are waves where once sunken skeletons rise like coral,

polished pure of their violent history.

Drowning in the book, imagining ants collecting,

synchronized on an apple core.

Bells in my head, footsteps rising, closer now,

you know me well. Inside the book, you know me better.

We are two trees – branches and roots, an interwoven crocheted

impressionistic portrait, staying through heavy storms.

Inside the book, we are creatures of greater sympathy.

You are like yarn, tied to my brush and hold, never in

the liquid valley of a distant boat, or obvious as a prickly,

rigid rope. I am mature, a woman with a ceiling to touch,

fifty feet of surrounding stillness, unfettered

from the expectations of my time and gender,

radiant, more, whole.

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

First published in “Wilderness House Literary Review”

Allison Grayhurst

Poet

Category Archives: Excerpts from Book 12 “Wallpaper Stars” Edge Unlimited Publishing (2013)

Voice

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Endure

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The Book

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