High Alert. by Allison Grayhurst

I SEE a FRUIT FLY
on the mirror –
summer is a shallow blanket
lifting into autumn.
The moon has lips
like a shimmering worm,
wet from the rain. ...READ MORE

The air has gone cold as a traitor’s eternal bed.

Antaeus (he being the only unchained Giant
and de facto caretaker of the Ninth Circle)

has left his windows open again, and
wing-driven winds off Cocytus are
loose in the streets, howling reveled Hell.

A small white egret, beguiling beautiful
her wing-blades swallowed air
everytime she weighed the sky
You fell for her, took her home
away, from the lush greens and emerald blues
She smiled for you, she wanted to,
To bring you pleasure unbound,
a liminal existence, she didn’t quite care
she danced for you, watching the summer tiptoe
though her feet craved for the wetlands.

It’s better than being dead. I think.

Torture is a mind
anchored in unrequited faithfulness
refusing to move on.

Two of them at work.
Glassine drops of sweat,
mirror the shine from the pit below.

Radiating fractal patterns of light,
a diamond,
disemboweled with furious strokes of the spade,
sends a shiver of excitement,
down the spine. For one.

Swirling violins viola & cello
repeating symmetries lifting, the room.
This is where hyper-quantization

comes in, a secret ideology
invading your head till
you feel hacked, everything

being on the grid. A yellow streetlight
signifying memory
opening like a mirror