Alison Hurwitz: Submerged

The book door opens and he is sucked into a fluid wheel.
Once within it there is only wind and ride and journey, turning
pages, a spill of filigreed calligraphy, rhythmic symbols on repeat
while a grackle in the manuscript illuminates the word Again,
then arranges acorns, eating kernels on a tree-lined road
that’s traced in shadow, a chronicle with crenellated edge, the sense

of water’s rush and ebb, its passage. If I dip my hand I’ll sense
the story run across his skin, his mind a moving wheel
that cannot stop its circling, bearing down the road
with grackle wings, a story leafing past each turning
point as he adjusts, finds a horse to ride his own attention. Again
the arc of narrative braids strands of his awareness to repeat

that soft-serrated sound of rifled pages, repeat
and let the consonants converge and ruffle into wings, sense
imagination flexing as the characters rise and riddle, rest, again
assemble. They speak; he bends his body close, each word a wheel
that brings him nearer to conclusion with its turning.
In the rising action, he becomes the solitary figure on a road

upon which loaded metaphors cart their synchrony, a road
which twists in varied revolutions, a convolution on repeat,
a man who rides his horse at gallop through each turning.
I could call forever from the edge of story: he would sense
nothing but the pounding of his heart. If words could wheal
his skin, he’d be marked by their foreshadowing, would again

return to where the grackle lifts, launching its racked cry again
into the air. A bird of prey, a spill of feathered ink along the road
which veins its red clay lines. The larger bird retreats to wheel
and orbit, while the rider pauses, shades his eyes. He could repeat
the litany of wind, the jostle of the saddle, the sorrow he can sense
awake or sleeping. He, the journeyman adventurer who, turning,

sees his story spread and billowing behind him, a hero turning
into darkness or perhaps the carmine ink of injured bird again
returning to his wrist, a bit of inner twist inside its beak. I sense
the syncopation of his breath as he realizes that this road
is leading him in circles. Now he must dismount, must repeat
the journey on his feet, must cross the ruts left by a vanished wheel,

walk backwards with his grackle on the road. He must lead his horse, repeat
the revolution of the journey as a wheel before he can fit a key into its turning,
take in the final word, hear his mother call again, return from symbol into sense.

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Copyright 2026 Alison Hurwitz

Alison Hurwitz (she/her), is a former cellist and dancer who finds music in language.