Prose and Poetry by Alley Greymond
5/11/26 (c)
Measuring my worth in cups
is not as tangible as it first seemed.
I use a dry cup for the bones,
a liquid cup for the blood,
measuring spoons for eyes and teeth.
I think I am accurate.
Discrepancies pile up.
The sum of my parts
is less than the whole
All my better parts are weightless
and lack the volume to measure.
I need to find a scale I cannot tip.
5/11/26 (c)
Sometimes I set a fire
just to set a fire.
I take someone’s lunch
from the community fridge
eat it at my desk.
When the notes go up
to quit stealing lunches—
I tape trolling signs beneath it—
It wasn’t that tasty anyway.
I keep that part of my life
anonymous.
I need fellow warriors
to fight beside me.
It’s a thrill—
to flex, to fume,
to throw opinions around—
what needs to change,
who has to go.
Alone, I am just cruel.
Together, we call it justice.
5/11/26 (c)
I draw a hot bath.
Turn screens off.
Essential oil in the diffuser.
Soft jazz in the background.
Returning to a good book,
I wait for my mind
to loosen its teeth.
The only thing missing
is a black cat’s company.
5/10/2026 (c)
On the Monday my father died
three strangers reminded me to smile.
Behind a wire fence
you stubbed out a cigarette
like you were killing a roach or trust.
Hey, smile lady.
Why grieve—
it’s a woman’s obligation
to improve the scenery.
Barista, you paused before frothing cream—
you’d be prettier if you smiled.
There it is. I got it—
from the executive suite.
That day I felt freed
of my father’s body shaming:
fat girl, hips too fat, thighs too thick
ugly face—don’t cry!
No man likes a sad woman.
His shaming—but not yours.
I’d rather read alone at the bar
than
hear unsolicited advice
and poorly executed pick-up lines.
Calamari intrigues more
than your touch ever could.
I remember
you wouldn’t hire me.
Over-qualified—
your clients couldn’t accept a woman.
Mediocrity is the white noise
behind business.
When you promoted me
for less than the man
before me—
and after.
They had families to support.
My daughter counted
as little as me.
When I threatened to sue—
unless you quit asking for blowjobs,
stop pressing me against
the walk-in freezer
to bite my earlobe,
You molested me at 7,
raped me at 21,
and again at 56.
Age did not protect me.
Was it good for you?
Single American men,
on the day my father died
my duty to love any man died.
Draft from 2015, FINALLY deep edited. 5/8/2026 (c)
For Art T
1.
I waited six thousand miles
and twenty-four years for your birth
to some other mother.
With every one of my five miscarriages
my womb emptied
unformed and inert pieces of you.
I seek to enfold you
in rich endometrium mulch—
delay the final push
as you wrench free—
silence
where there should be screaming.
There will never be a natural birth
between us.
2.
Drowning americanos in the coffee shop
you spoke about your childhood in Yerevan—
haunted by a century-old genocide.
You were lyrical about Inanna
and pre-Hellenistic goddesses—
heady describing
Communism’s collapse—
insurrection is your pornography.
You were twenty-four years younger.
So much knowledge,
you even corrected my English.
3.
Abruptly
you kissed me.
Our nose posts clinked together
like a flamenco dancer’s castanets,
a precise, complicated rhythm
one had to live to know.
I inhaled your exhale, lavishly,
slow as savoring champagne, your exhale—
the only air worth breathing.
And for a moment, I thought,
maybe I can do this again.
4.
When you found me
I was storing fat
like an American black bear
preparing for hibernation,
an aging mammalian alchemist
no longer cultivating milk.
Little remained
of the desires rising
behind stalagmites—
this want so sudden, unexpected—
it felt violent.
I am too old for colostrum,
milk gone thin—
I am a fraud of a mother.
With you, what else could I be?
5.
You traversed continents
and wherever you tarried
mothers surfaced—
mini-mothers, mothers-to-be,
monotremes, marsupials,
wounded women
hooked by the chance
to nurture,
to be in your narrative.
I am not the only mother
to tongue-trace
your indecipherable map of ink—
to touch the steel-filled,
the empty piercings
scattered like initiation wounds
from a tribe existing only
in your imagination—
I am not the only mother to think
I could thread them all
with fish wire
and tether you to my skin
connecting us
in a resplendent amalgam of pain.
I was never the only mother
to molest and exalt you.
6.
I tell you—
You are the gist of all my memories.
Every recollection holds you—.
we are two incoherent stories
that merge into a whole.
I tell you—
I was in the shadows at your birth
I watched your naivety break.
It was not my place, not my skill set,
not my doing or undoing
to move you from fugue to joy.
Yet I am but a ghost
of your mother
crossing through.
5/9/26 (c)
I step away.
My city apartment becomes
a mountain retreat in dead winter—
Gaia’s womb
where I gestate
listening beneath
the surrounding chatter.
5/9/26 (c)
The moment before I cross the finish line
I remember
brushing off the dirt,
rubbing my knees, crying,
then standing.
My friend had leg bone cancer—
for a decade now
has limped, a cane for balance.
Another, wheelchair bound,
removes prosthetic legs
at the bar for comfort.
A single misstep can set me back two years.
Still—
we keep standing.
