My wine glass is a coffee mug with handsome Houdini painted on, tied up, cuffed, dipped upside down in cold water. He’s got a face like he’s sure he’ll get free, like if he doesn’t, he’s sure he’s at least immortal enough to be reborn one day on a mug in the next millennium.
Houdini’s wine mug is tricky. You pour the cheap stuff in behind the antique-colored, faux posters, and the wiry escapist slips his bonds without a twitch.
Or, to be more accurate, the bonds slip him. The handcuffs disappear, the straight jacket undoes, the lung-crushing water drains into the polished black scrim that works the inside of the cup, into the pulse-lulling red that sloshes behind it.
The bonds dissipate, almost, and slink their way down my esophagus— a rain of deconstructive intoxicants to ensnare the presto hands and abracadabra body of the guilt I carry, at the bottom
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 