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When The City Speaks
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It is no small place
this devil’s field
where leopard’s blood
runs through the streets
like a constellation
cut from the sky.
Drunkards, drug pushers,
the cold amoebas that
die without seeing a dawn.
In Chinatown, the spell is
set loose, splitting
sidewalks with fury.
Waxen murderers, a barnyard
of devourers.
Inside,
lovers tremble,
clutched tight together,
sensual and desperate,
anaesthetized by passion,
by common fear
of the cruel madness
that pounds and pursues
just outside their door,
where all
will never be
well nor
free.
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Copyright © 1991 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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Published in “The Bees Are Dead” July 2017
“It is our great pleasure to announce that Allison Grayhurst’s ‘When the City Speaks’ is our 100th publication! Grayhurst’s poem is a paradigm example of the tone and theme that The Bees Are Dead set out to promote. It presents modern urban living as a dystopia already contrived – where class is a predator, red in tooth and claw; an airborne sickness. Where ‘opportunity’ is but a taunt.
Grayhurst’s lines are snappy and frantic, reflecting the anxiety of her city’s skittish citizens. Her imagery is bleak yet with a surreal beauty coaxed up by zoomorphic and East Asian references. A classic grayscale poem with flashes of luminous iridescence…
We are fortunate to have two more pieces from this great poet locked away safely in our hive’s vault, and we look forward to sharing these with you in the not too distant future…
– P.A-B.”
http://www.thebeesaredead.com/poetry/city-speaks-allison-grayhurst/
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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“Grayhurst’s rapturous outpouring of imagery makes her poems easily enjoyable … Like a sear the poet seeks to fathom sensual and spiritual experience through the images of a dream.” Canadian Literature
“Allison Grayhurst’s Common Dream is a massive book by a talented and enthusiastic young writer, with a feel for descriptive, meaningful verse. Philosophical and very deep,” Paul Rance, editor of Eastern Rainbow, U.K., spring 1993.
“Her poems read like the journal entries of a mystic – perhaps that what they are. They are abstract and vivid, like a dreamy manifestation of soul. This is the best way, in prose, one can describe the music which is … the poetry of Allison Grayhurst,” Blaise Wigglesworth Oh! Magazine
“Rich images and complex, shifting metaphors drive Allison Grayhurst’s poems. She focuses on sexual love and interior landscapes, widening to include the heart, eternity and all.” Next Exit
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