I dreamed of a very short person, flailing, asking me if I knew Brutus. Yes, I said, yes, yes I knew Brutus. Et tu Brute, and all that, chewed forever in the second mouth of Satan. Yes, yes, I did. Brutus and I were familiar. The short person, neither man nor woman, older than young but not old, dark haired, flailed wilder and screamed, No, no. No. You do not know Brutus. Not that Brutus. You do not know.
Now, of course, waking, I worry about twenty-three stab wounds on the Senate steps. I worry about most of them finding mark in my spine. I worry about not being hero enough for my bloody back to be counted a travesty. I worry about cruel gravity pulling me into the arms of a son or daughter metaphorical who I failed to acknowledge in real life, and trading betrayal for betrayal with my child by each other’s sticky, dilating eyes.
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 