3 Poems by Allison Grayhurst

Thinking Outside

Touching tails
and feather wings.
The apple trees bend
and sing of autumn's coming.
Starlings talk across backyards
and the high-pitched beetle
fills the wind like a calming drug.
In this place as summer fades
the quiet demands self-truth.
To pull from inside
a lacerated pride
and pile it on the dried grass.
Shadows mend the divided self
and love is an activity
to understand while counting birds
overhead.


The Making of Dreams

Landing lucky
this side of the threshold.
Nobody sees me. I see
what other eyes cannot. But
that is easy. It is not easy
to dilute my passion for the
distractions of duty. To hold
up the mirror and find a look
I’ve never known before.
Under the carpet the days collect
and erect a year of hardship and somehow,
remarkable glory. I know this is where
I am supposed to be. I know the price
and the food. Lights on. Lights off. Balance
is never the goal.


Four Sides

Four sides to the silence
that ribbons my throne.
Four thieves that pry open
my secrets as night blends
with day.
One that skates my terrain, slicing and cutting
and so very cold.
One whose mouth stretches wide,
consuming my minstrel’s tale.
Another who tugs and slows my voice rejoicing.
And than a fourth who digs my sex out of my thighs
and beds me a eunuch.

But for those quad-curses are four more
fierce lights that shade all grieving with tenderness
and meaning. Four bags from a magician’s dream,
orbed in wonder and the waters that go on forever.

I will not complain or caress my cancer to break
apart my prize.
I will just say my tune is told and today
my bones hurt but the food
is plenty.                                                                                        


Bionote

           Allison Grayhurst has had over 200 poems in more than 135 journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and in the United Kingdom, including Parabola (summer 2012), South Florida Arts Journal, The Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, Wascana Review, Poetry Nottingham International, The Cape Rock, Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry, poetrymagazine.com; Fogged Clarity, Out of Our, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Decanto, and White Wall Review.
            Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published nine other books of poetry and two collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman.
            Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was recently published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012.
            She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children, two cats, and a dog. She also sculpts, working with clay.