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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
My mother used to water our back garden Wearing nothing but her Mormon underwear And she bought the sheer silky kind Not the thick cotton. What goes on in the temple Is not secret, it’s sacred say the Mormons and I Believe them. An apostate child for twenty years And I have never looked up the endowment Ceremony online. But I know all about the underwear From my mom’s summer gardening habits and From when I had to gather them up and put them In a plastic reusable grocery bag for her friend To dispose of in a sacred way after she died.
I saw her temple clothes too when I went with her Church ladies to dress her body before she Met the fire. The people who had retrieved her body From the board and care left her in her gown And half open diaper. When we opened the bag her Mouth was open like she was begging for my help. I tried to focus on her peeling bare feet Only on her feet but my eyes kept reaching for her In her face and my ears for the silent scream.
I had to leave the room and let her faith friends Finish. This was not their first body. Not by a long shot. All near my mom’s age themselves I wondered if They wondered who would be gowning them Or if their mortuary would collect them in a more Dignified way. For their sakes, I hoped so.
They are clever. I wondered how exactly you Get a floor length temple dress on a dead body. The trick Is you cut it up the back and down the seams Of the sleeves. You lay the dress on and tuck it around. Mormon beehive ingenuity and industriousness Is something I have always admired.
And the courage. Those women’s courage.
When they were finished they called me back Into the room, pulled the cover from her face And said, “Isn’t she pretty?” She was wearing Her veil, white dress, green apron. Blessedly They had closed her terrified mouth.
She was pretty.
Light in her hair Hose in her hand Watering the red hibiscus In her silky sacred garments Watching a hummingbird Wings nearly invisible Dart in and out of the spray.
M. N. Ashley 