My one beauty
my one pure thing,
I can’t heal you.
I can’t.
The fever’s in your girlish mind.
My hands fail me—
are clawed up by morning.
There is nothing I can hold
through the night.
I have been there before.
Let me focus on my wine,
plying lust.
Play along with me.
Let me hurt you a little more.
Crawl down here with me,
willing.
I’ve given up the face of God.
Yours will do.
Let me scour the trusting flesh
from your cheeks
with stony grave dirt
and self-prophecy.
Rub your nose in it—
cologne
and your blossoming body
of sorrows
still heady in my clothes.
Your scent is changed now.
Woman,
let me thrust into your hands
wet loam and loathing
rotting limp leaves and spoil.
Make glory of them for me
I beg you—
it is all I have left as a man.
You have been a guiding light
and I will never
let you
leave me.
-M.
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Published by M. Ashley
I am an essayist and poet. My work has been rejected by some of the finest journals in America. Fortunately, it also gets accepted from time to time and has appeared in equally fine journals such as Word Riot, Inlandia, Brew City Magazine, and SageWoman, among others.. In 2002, I won the Academy of American Poets Prize for Vanderbilt University.
For no good reason, I possess an unnecessarily dark humor which is why being third generation California Inland Empirian delights me so. My gods are weird. I once won $350 for writing a smartassed essay on “why the wise use of water is important in my daily life”. I am undoubtedly the Greek god Hermes’ special snowflake. I’m pretty sure I got into college via a series of fortuitous clerical errors.
When I had to grow up and get a real job, I decided against it and stayed a writer. I have worked many odd—and I mean odd—jobs to support my habit: PR writer for country music hopefuls, resume massager, WalMart fitting room attendant and switchboard operator, and telephone psychic, just to name a few.
I am also albino. That's why my psychic gifts are so strong. I traded in my pigment for magical foresight, because that's how it works. It gets all technical. Trust me. That's totally how it works.
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M. N. Ashley 