Writing Life
Buddhist black robe—
An earring. TikTok haircut.
Devotee Gen Z
-M. Ashley
The computer assures me this is not a haiku, but something called a senyru that is like a haiku, but rather than about nature, it’s about humans and can be a bit wry. That is definitely a lot closer to how I see the world. Probably every haiku I’ve ever written is really a senyru. 5th grade haiku instruction, as it turns out, was a bit incomplete. 5-7-5 does not always a haiku make. I had no idea.
In your misty
Drug addled mind this man
And make no mistake
He is a man
Becomes a demon
Skin shining
Underbelly white
Trench dwelling shark teeth
Jaundice yellow as his eyes
He hisses and spits and
Holds you down and smiles
With those yellow teeth
And eyes
Do trench sharks have venom
You ask? Yes. They have venom.
They have words with venom.
They have black bile brains that
Make the words with the venom
A perfect vintage the black bile
And venom decanted perfectly
The venomous words assembled
Into vintner’s full bodied hate notes
Cold cigarette ash-mouth bouquet
And long squalid tongues
That spit past the eviscerating
Yellow teeth
Into your nose
Into your eyes
So you see and sense
Nothing else but this
But him. But him
Doing this.
Gentle Jesus won’t help you
Here, the venomous
Thing
Is un-compelled by prayer
Or weeping
Or reason
Or kitten-voiced flattery.
You’ve tried.
You have to call
The ugly gods instead:
The liver eaters
The eyeball gouging
Drunken deformed baby
Making lineage grinding
Gods more venomous
Than him… And
From under those Gods’
Sweaty, stinking
Body-salt wings
You have to spit back.
You have to spit back.
-M. Ashley
In honor of National Poetry Writing Month, I started a podcast.
This is, in part, the fault of Natalie Goldberg, who insists on the importance of reading our work aloud to someone. The trouble is, I don’t have any poetry lovers in my house, and when I start talking poetry, they all pretty much… zzzzzz.
So I decided to bring my poetry—along with a bit of classic poetry—to the world via a podcast, because the world clearly does not have enough podcasts yet.
For now, it’s very simple: just me, in a quiet room, reading three of my own poems and one classic poem, all organized around a theme.
In the future, I’d love for this to grow into something a little larger—something like an audio literary journal featuring contemporary voices from all walks of life. A place for fresh, energetic poetry that may not exactly fit the shape and size currently being allowed through the literary gates.
The first episode’s theme is family, and includes three of my poems—Ophelia’s Opal, My Mother’s Attempted Slow Death by Refusing to Eat, and Easter Portrait—along with “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Please forgive the occasional blips as I start and stop. Me in a quiet room reading poetry is still getting the hang of this thing.
You can listen right here, or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
If you’d like to share your poetry for possible inclusion in a future episode, you can send it to: MichelleReadsPoems@gmail.com
Until next episode… Happy Poet-ing!
-Michelle
The crooked answer:
Showing me his dusty green duffel filled with
War artifacts—a white corpsman’s tunic
Stained with brown blood, weirdly kept and
Cherished, a gas mask he demonstrated
Still fit his head perfectly, his grungy left boot
With a hole in the toe. He said,
“That’s a bayonet hole!” And smiled
Down at the grunge. I wasn’t aware Charlie
Used bayonets, but Vietnam had been a
French colony, so…
The straight answers:
At the video store—“Dad,
Let’s get Good Morning Vietnam.”
No. “Why?” That’s not a time
I like to remember.
At the video store another day—
“Let’s get 9-5” Jane Fonda in blue
In the cover ensemble. He ripped
The video out of my hands, slammed
It on the floor and stomped her face.
That’s what we do with that.
The clerk and my 12 year old self
Bit our lips and looked
At something else.
With my mother—
divorced from him for a decade
“You mean you don’t know
what Jane Fonda DID?”
And later—“That rat!
Bayonet hole my ass! He
Had a bunch of beer one day and
Decided to chop down a volunteer
Palm in the backyard. The axe went
Through his boot. He nearly
Lost his stupid drunk toe!”
And this, often—two in the morning
Up for a glass of water, Dad
In the TV room eating all the
Strawberry ice cream again
Fast in gargantuan spoonfuls
Second pack of smokes that day
Slouched in the harvest god 70s
Recliner, laughing at M.A.S.H.
Closing his eyes at the helicopters.
-M. Ashley
A good juicy scoop of mind-
Stuff quivering on the spoon
Slid slithery onto the tongue
Like licking silk.
Read it to me again, Baby
Orgasm or empty bladder
Either way
A relief.
Something
So
Good
Ego eviscerated on the
Golden linoleum wet with
Meaty gore. That’s all me
Down there. Down here
I go again.
Let’s go again.
-M. Ashley
I am starting a poetry reading podcast and would love to feature your work. If you’d like me to read your poem on the show, please send submissions to MichelleReadsPoems@gmail.com
Together I think we can build something great.
In those last three years
After she fell—elbows deep as I was
In human diarrhea diapers and the
Funk of her, refusing even a dry
Bath—Fox News and Star Trek at 11
All day
We both were so afraid.
One toilet hadn’t run at all in several
Years, the other was so corroded with
Hard water deposits and yellow hard water
Stains that I had to push the paper down
By hand, and both bathroom sinks
Slowed to a trickle. My mother couldn’t bear
The fear of trying to walk again and falling
And I couldn’t bear the fear of her death or
Living with her like this much longer. Neither
One of us could bear the fear of calling the plumber.
She died two years ago. Fear, it turns out,
Is useless. There is no immobility still enough
For Death to assume she already collected.
We learn this the hard way.
We learn it more than once.
I called the plumber.
When I wash my hands after
Flushing either of the working toilets
I watch the water flow freely
The swirl imperceptible
And it’s a miracle.
-M. Ashley
I am starting a poetry podcast and would love to feature your work. Upcoming themes are: Family and Connection, Writing on Writing, and Death and Taxes: The Inevitable. Please send submissions to: MichelleReadsPoems@gmail.com. Together, I think we can build something great.
Underage prostitutes walk past the costume shop
in hundred degree heat
One happily remembers to the other
how she went as Cinderella in third grade
how the lace collar itched
how her hoop skirt got tangled
as she crawled through her church’s
lame haunted house
how a friendly churchman,
the one who baptized her
who was on excellent terms with her mother,
lifted her out of the cardboard box
Tunnel of Doom,
took a long time to untangle her skirt,
then commented how the itchy lace collar
was pretty—
feminine and pretty.
-M. Ashley
I am starting a poetry reading podcast and would love to read your work on the show! If you have anything you'd like to submit, please contact me at MichelleReadsPoems@gmail.com Upcoming themes are: Family and Connection, Poetry of Place, Writing on Writing, and Death and Taxes—The Unavoidable.
Hello Friends,
I have decided to start a little poetry reading podcast (gotta make this “sultry sultry” voice earn its keep!), and I am wondering if any of you in this wonderful community would like to submit your poems for me to read. Upcoming themes are:
4/1 Ep. 1 Family and Connection
4/1 Ep. 2 Poetry of Place
4/8 Ep. 3 Writing on Writing
4/15 Ep. 4 Death and Taxes—Absolutes
My first episode will be on 4/1 so my audience is exactly 0 as of this moment, but what I would like to build toward is something like an audio literary journal and I would love if you talented poets would be a part of it.
Let me know if you’ve got something you’d like me to read.
Send poetry and inquiries to: MichelleReadsPoems@gmail.com
Happy poet-ing!
-Michelle
I know you won’t believe me because
You’re in the thick of it, planning
Who will pick you up from the emergency
Room at 6am, who you haven’t worn out
Yet, because this will be your fourth
Time in three weeks, lustily watching the
Die with dignity commercials weirdly played
With the chirpy local morning news
You’re up watching at 4am because
That
Pain
Has kept you up all night
Having rolling panic attacks
Sobbing into your fuzzy couch pillows
Watching 90210 reruns trying to make the
Impossibly sweaty decision of sleep meds or
Pain meds, thinking maybe the ultimate relief
Would be taking them at the same time and
Tearing a hole in the universe as the doctors
Assured you would happen if you did.
You don’t go that route
And I’m proud of you.
It feels like this will go on forever
But I assure you it won’t. Just like your
Last sweet peach happiness squished between
Your Grabby fingers leaving them longing
And sticky, so the bitter bile will
Pass out from between your gritted teeth
Damn near burning them to powder.
You will smile again with those teeth
I swear.
The pain will become a shadow’s shadow in
Your sunlight mind and this time your
Sweet peach will taste richer for the compassion
That’s in it, for the lady annoying everyone moaning
In the ER bay next to you—because you were that lady—
For the wasting cancer patients who do this not months
But years and still smile at their children’s birthday parties
For
Yourself
When the bitter bile rises up again
As it will in a thousand ways
Body and heart but you will know
You will lie back into it languid limbs
Ride it like a native body surfer and know
It passes, this wave too, and this one
They all pass.
-M. Ashley
It could be anything
An orange peel
Sunset on a fractured path
Sunrise
On a fractured path
Cellulite on a
Fake-tanned thigh
Funky cheese
See here. See here. See here.
I’ve got my pointer out
Round the borders with every
Line-measure of words
But
Did you notice
Never on the actual
Thing
My frustration is quantifiable
I’ve made a chart
See here. See here. See here.
Just to the left of the
Glowing picture screen
Reader
I think we have both
Lost touch
It might have been longing
It might have been
Sunset on a fractured heart
Or some such
Trite shit as that
I give
Give up with me
Let’s call it
Funky cheese
Put our heads down on our desks
And take a nap
Poetry sucks anyway
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 