The night you find yourself alone outside an emergency room with a concussion in a bad part of town having paid a bill you can’t afford to pay waiting for a cab and shivering because it’s February and you left your coat at work
which is where you were injured which is where you left blood on the ground which is where the first words out of your boss’ mouth were to inform you and your involuntarily closing eyes that if you reported it the safety record would be ruined and no one would get a pizza party after all.
-M. Ashley
I still feel guilty about messing up the pizza party. Hear me read it:
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.
View all posts by M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 
Wow that really sucks.
LikeLike
It really did, but it was also sort of a rite of passage.
LikeLike