Prose and Poetry by Alley Greymond
2017/2026 (Tarot, the Sun Reversed).
I am not familiar with sunshine.
My mother is a rain cloud
and my father is gauze
saturated with chloroform and mud.
My energy diffuses,
dulling itself—
like pitted silver a century old.
But that was long ago.
Why do I forget
the horses we rode out on—
manes unbound,
no matter how many flowers we braided in.
All those voices
insisting
we were bright.
Still, I remember
the heat warms us,
the lawns brown
and the dirt cracks.
That moment I faced myself—
unvarnished,
tempted to shut my eyes,
to stare at my feet—
that moment startled
like a small blue bird
in the wrong season.
Who have I ever been,
but slightly outside
my own knowing?
And still—
something in it lifts:
not only the record
of my failures,
but what I have survived.
A reckoning,
without mercy,
without disguise.
I reach for blue—
blue crystals, aqua quartz—
something to hold
while I learn
to look.
2015, revised 2026. (c)
When I told him
that our intercourse needed to be
more “vagina-focused”
he became implacable—
a scolded child.
I felt his feet dig in,
his muscles tense for flight.
By the time I was ready
to bed him again
he announced he had taken a vow
of celibacy.
He said he found no pleasure in it.
The act was empty.
I was empty.
My desire, he said
implied possession—
something he now meant to avoid.
Jesus, I thought.
The lengths some men will go
to avoid satisfying a woman.
Today—coins, comfort, a garden.
She sits on an ornate bench
by the koi pond
bread in hand—
sourdough ripped apart,
moose milk cheese.
She eats it slowly,
as if it might run out.
Today she wears mulberry silk.
Once, her mother
made her clothes
from flour sacks and sheets.
When she goes quiet,
her assistant stands still,
waiting to be told.
The King of Cups
is sometimes uneasy
with his responsibility.
He
serves as pastor,
keeps a shop,
writes poems
no one asks for.
He
aches at every infidelity—
small thefts,
insults like papercuts,
teeth knocked loose
in bar fights.
He
speaks of forgiveness
as if it were a practice.
He
offers his hand
too quickly.
And I don’t know why,
but I distrust him
3/26/2026
The Page of Pentacles
considers taxidermy—
setting wire forms
into receptive postures,
glass eyes
refracting back
the viewer’s gaze.
3/27/2026 (c)
The page of Pentacles
picks up a spool of thread,
a skein of yarn.
She slams a slab of clay
on the wheel.
On weekends,
she keeps the books
for an aging neighbor.
Whatever her work,
she completes it.
Her casual reading this morning—
a chemistry book.
The spinach in the omelet—
from her own garden.
If something needs doing,
she begins,
and does not leave it half-made.
