The Universal Hustle by Gail Gray

The Universal Hustle
by Gail Gray

The hush of placation;
platitudes offered by the techno marvel
handheld; ear-plugged…
See no evil, hear no evil, touch no evil.

Spoon-fed thirty-second bites, flashfired
on brainpans eager for ease.
No cast of doubt
to unseat the interloper
slid upon the throne in slithered wires.
Provoke it as you would an enemy.

Questions on brows don’t reach the eyes
or mouth.
Have you mastered disconnect?
Do you explain away visual clues – blatant
supernartural slaps or are you FX’d on digital
fingersnaps?

Numb, dumb-downed to wormhole yawns
have you lost your gig on time/space slips?

Or do you witness trees as dance and bow
pogoslam even as the atun chimes its majesty?

Scattered from a broadcast splendor
bargain priced steal from a row of stalls
peopled with desperado winces…
those who refuse to transpose the music to magic.

Rewind, repeat…get the message this time.
Even the slug secretes nano-diamonds to facet-ize,
magnetize. Follow glimmering
nightpaths. The soul thrive-rides in shadows.

Or unwind in a nautilus twirl,
nether selves, together selves
dervish swirl,
spirals as singing bridge.

Author bio:

Gail Gray grew up in Lowell, Mass but now lives in Greenville, SC, USA. She is the author of three books of poetry, The Hazard of Waking Up, Spirals in Copper, and Planetary Tension and two collections of shorts stories, Dark Voices and Memories and Monsters. She is the owner of Shadow Archer Press and the editor of Fissure, a magazine of experimental art and writing. Her short stories have been published or will be published in Morpheus Tales, Pear Noir, moonShine Review, The Howling, Exquisite Corpse, Cover of Darkness 2009 anthology, and The Foliate Oak. Her poetry has been published in The Asheville Poetry Review, Cokefish, Exquisite Corpse, Eviscerator Heaven, Being, Big Swollen Toe, Sisyphus, Zygote Abstract Libertine and Gloom Cupboard Main Street Rag, and seinundwerden t and is upcoming in
he anthology, America!.