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enjoy thisAllison Grayhurst writing in the free 2015 PDF file chapbook: No Raft — No Ocean (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2015 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover to order No Raft - No Ocean as a book at any time!

Where are you? I’ve been calling

Allison Grayhurst

and waiting, soiled and famished, anticipating your return,
circled by predatory chains. There are things
we need to talk about. Are you
here, or just a synchronized inspiration, energy
as icing for one day? It is not enough.
I need you here, not galactic but like a man
before his wedding hour, needing me too,
focused entirely on my fulfilment. Where are you?
In the sparrow-droppings? In the kitten’s fear?
I cannot go forward so close to the lurking eyes
of mire and sacrificial doom.

Why are you leaving me blindfolded,
tremours and hard lumps invading my body,
aching against the sky for you,
on my knees, in many ways excavated, sagging without
mettle or substance? Where are you -
in the sideboard? The baseboard?

Compel my breath into freedom,
sing loud in my left ear, love me
like a solid spike, but weightless in its consequences.
I drive the rattle. The world is huge and
I am capsizing, eaten by its ignorance and filthy demands.
Where are you? Did you fly away?
Can you be my gravy, not dry and vague
as a passing half-hearted smile?

Can you not pay for my funeral and be done with the obituary,
sending me into the afterlife, a new life
of baby days and infant trust?
Where do I hurt? For you, everywhere. It is impossible
to escape, impossible to cross my legs, fold my arms.
Tender or with a shovel pounding,
break through this cobwebbed room,
give me a background I can play with, a full dish, delight
in the splintered wood.

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