Writing Life
I will be reading Wednesday evening at the SHOUT! open mic poetry night at Half Off Books in Whittier. Come on out and see me. The theme is love poetry, (Valentine’s Day is creeping up upon us, you see), and I have chosen the infamous Naked Hemingway poem which I will read in the even more infamous sultry, sultry voice.
You know you want to hear it. You know you do.
-M.
Loose grime and stringy meat
that comes away in the water
and lies in wait by the drain,
tangled in the silverware,
ready to snarl like seaweed
around the pruned fingers that clutch
in the dark to clean the forks and knives.
Cold, gray and scuzzy water—
reason to fear sharks below,
to fear the chum they’ve spit out
not good enough to get stuck between their teeth,
not good enough to wave alongside the gristle
from where a surfer’s arm was severed
uncleanly from its shoulder.
-M.
You’ll roll from aisle to aisle
aimless and slow
eyeballing the shiniest packages first
overhead and at foot
at your groin and at your twitching nose.
You’ll make better bad choices
(still bad choices)
fill your cart with loud
brightly powdered crunchies
that exercise your jaw
but stain your hands
without so much as a goodnight kiss
or any nutritional value at all.
-M.
My ancient fiction professor at Vanderbilt creaked in his departmental chair and told us about a man he knew who drank Dr. Pepper hot. When work was over, this man would get into his after-fives and stir it in a saucepan over low heat, delicately, like he was handling milk. “Sometimes,” Professor Sullivan said, “it’s all right to let your characters take life a little too far.”
-M.
Natanon was near the last one to deplane and make his weary way through the Roy Rogers airport. He met us by the empty spinning of the baggage carousel. His mother sent him to us from Thailand to finish his education in the States.
He was sent to us to get a little time with his dad.
He was dressed in black like a cowboy villain, but almost bald being only two weeks out from a stint as monk in his hometown of Phuket. His father and grandfather hugged him welcome. He smiled, but his shoulders were drawn up. He and I shook hands. He smiled again, but looked down at his shiny, square-toed shoes.
Later that day with the family, eating fast food Chinese— a mystery to him—he slid his cookie’s fortune across the greasy table for me to read to him, his English still a little weak. I read it low-voiced like a mystic and, as benediction, exclaimed, “…in bed!”
His English and teenage hormones were just strong enough to make him blush, drop his head and silent shake his drawn up shoulders down, with laughter.
-M.
Work, work—consumed by the work. And who could correct him? This was the creature his mother bore him to be. What would seem purgatory to the rest of us was his joy and satisfaction—building a palace of thought that would never be finished. No matter where he placed the lights, there was always a better place for them. There were always dark corners that needed to be lit.
-M
I was unnerved—the way he walked at ease
against the toss, Pacific restlessness
at heel as if he were a natural
at ocean life, though born a desert rat
-M.
I am reminded of a cool autumn night in Tennessee when I turned off the lights in my room, lit a single black candle smelling of the last anticipations of November, and turned on a gentle jazz album. I slipped into a slip of a nightie, black and silky. I set the candle on my windowsill, made a hot and heady drink, and crawled under the blankets. I opened the window to give myself a shiver of autumn on my bare shoulders. I sipped my drink with the jazz, watched the candle flame, and felt the familiar tingle of sex, but softly—foreplay with the beauty of my self, and the beauty of the night, the flame, the music, the heat and sweet on my tongue.
-M.
Dear Professor Weatherby,
You were one of the toughest and, by far, the most fearsome of the English department crew. Other students joked you clicked your heels when you turned corners. Professor Sullivan once said you took a swim in the Gulf and the sharks were afraid of you. You made students cry, regularly. You were outstanding.
It was such a small moment for you I’m sure, but after class one day you listened to me go on about inventing my own poetic form. You listened to me jabber on in my excitement and creative rush, (I’m sure I had turned bright red by the breathless second sentence). You listened to me, and after, you leaned in and said, “That’s what makes you a poet.”
I carry your words in my pocket to this day for when I doubt my craft. Such a small moment, but to me, it lights the way. Thank you.
-M.
Knowing the ghetto birds fly
also over the ones I love
that we are connected by this
that we are hardened equally
used to the sound
come to depend on it
to know we’re home.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 