Author: 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.

Second Best Hair

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Second Best Hair

Still keeps your head warm

And your lover’s fingers busy.

-M.

(Day 18 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. This one is an “American sentence,” 17 syllables. Definitely not a home run, but enough to keep my streak alive and that’s what I’m all about on through the 67th day! Onward and forward.)

On Whose Authority Am I Writing?

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I’m working on a book. I’m making an outline from my notes. I found this and it tickled me. “I don’t know if any publisher is going to want to publish anything authoritative that I say pretty much just came out of my own butt.”

All too true. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

-M.

Goddess Physis: Goddess ALL

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One feminine hand one
Masculine hand wearing
A heavy gold watch ticking

She sat down inside me
Settled down inside me
Her heavenly blue

Robes enfolded me as
Heaven IS and enfolds
Her, Her head all my head

My thoughts all Her
Thoughts She the Law the
Law Love

She said
Don’t
Be Afraid

-M.
(Day 14 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. I made it to two weeks! -Victory lap-)

Mortality Beyond Divinity

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Gods misunderstand
Death—Death himself
Deathless misunderstands
Forever destruction—forever
Loss—a self that decays inside
Itself until it disappears.

A god, from a full-
Bodied god can become a
Lesser-bodied god—an
Insignificant pinpoint of
Flickering ether, but still
Sovereign though infinitesimal and
Over unbounded time can
Gather unto its own flickering
Ether substance—body new
Come to body that was and
Will be forever

Body new come to body eternal that
Misunderstands body new
Come to dust
Depersonalized as dust comes
To gather to itself
A noisome film
On the cradle ledge of an infinitely
Born and born and born
Infant god

-M.
(Day 12 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)

Day 11 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit

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I wrote a poem today but you’re not going to see it. I feel like hell and today’s poem shows it. But I wanted to be accountable, so here’s me being accountable and running a haggard eleventh lap with one seriously shitty poem tucked under my shirt. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all to see.

-M.

(Day 11 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)

Exclusionary Gratitude re: Gum

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I am grateful for gum
But only for myself and
The highbrow few who
Know how to chew
Silently

Everyone else? A crack
Or a smack should get you ten
In the pen where open-
Hearted and closed-
Mouthed missionaries
Teach by parable how to
WWJD it
In regards to absent-
Minded yet tasty and
Socially acceptable cud.

-M.
(Day 10 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)