Writing Life
One fourteen-year-old lies in another’s lap
face-up
squeezing the pimples on her
I’ll-die-for-you-sweetheart’s scabby
sunburned face.
I lie with you
naked back to the earth
dug deep
moist and recently turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.
-M. Ashley
I saw you bought that house I loved
on the hill, off Doheny, hard to get to
during rush hour or when the veins of LA
burst and bleed all over West Hollywood
up Sunset
and gush through the Bel Air gates.
The skin of my inner wrists
with her oxygen-blue undertones
(soft contemporary design)
is up for sale too.
Ten million or best offer
(like the house on Doheny)
plus, realistically, another million
to meet your execting standards.
How deep, my Darling,
are your lightless pockets?
-M. Ashley
He laid back into the arm of the sofa
and let me strip him to the waist.
I worked the buttons of his dress shirt
methodically, counting
(there were so many buttons)
I felt
I would never reach the shirt tail
never release him
fully,
(until I did).
His skin was cold and seemingly
lit of its own. It was
the sickly purple gray of a hot
oncoming
(interminable) night.
His chest and abdomen
all full of little scars.
He opened his languid arms, wrists
still buttoned
(and bound)
into the shirt as I bowed
to kiss
the ancient wounds.
“Like you,” he said
(graciously)
“I know something of war.”
-M. Ashley
We were meant to dance
I think
This is how the, “Push me.
Push me.” love rounds
Into something more like sway
With the long ache and
“Hold me up
Hold me up.”
-M. Ashley
This poem is about ten years old. One of my all-time favorites.
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky
lucky
Me
-M. Ashley
Your School of Music staff picture made
you out to be so much uglier than
you actually are so
I couldn’t show my friends, so
we couldn’t fan ourselves with our
fangirl palms and drool together over
you.
I couldn’t make them understand the
dark-haired, fair-faced impetus for
trotting a mile to class in
the actual spiked Mary Janes that
made de Sade himself blanch—
what pale, long-fingered hand moving
half notes from here to there delectability made
me choose the long sensuous skirt with
the long sensuous slit, (oh mid 90’s rage!)
what high-toned atonal muscle, what
used-to-be-high-school-outcast humor
made me squeeze my thighs together
surreptitiously between
this-will-be-on-the-quiz cues.
Dr. Link—may I call you Stan—
of course I may, I
was also madly in love with
every single silver button on
your early spring black jacket.
-M. Ashley
Walking tired the plains of Desolation,
a lost man lowers himself hard to the earth.
A woman comes to sit beside him.
This is her home and she is not lost.
She uncovers his face,
pulls his shaming hands away.
She has drawn dust angels for him
with her clay-covered toes.
He sees them and sees they are miraculous—
her toes
and the way her naked legs lay
parallel to the angels’ outstretched wings.
And he tells her she is beautiful.
And she does not believe him.
-M. Ashley
Hear me read it:
His senses perk
to the smell of green grass
in a fertile garden, the light
of a broad path made plain,
a promising crack in the wall,
and the laughter
of better women echoing.
The one beside him mercifully
slips his fingers.
The one beside him mercifully
speaks.
Leave me a kiss for my collection,
here in the tender crook of my arm,
and remember me sometimes
that I was your Darling
in the dead and lonely place.
-M. Ashley
“Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.”
-Rumi
I imagine us bound together by barrel
Rings. Maybe we could go into the lovers’
Protection program under the name
Cooper and you could kiss my clever
Mouth with your clever mouth almost
Out in the open. Only the gods and the
Government would know we were never
Supposed to end up barrel bound to
Each other.
Your people think you married down.
Fuck your people. I married you and
You’re a criminal—with lots of money so…
Is that up or sideways? With you
It’s almost always sideways.
A barrel on its side rolls wobbly.
-M. Ashley
If you make your god jealous, submit to him.
Love him. Ruffle his curly black hair. Offer him
your body and all your softest parts, the ones
you only offer some of the time.
Swear on the river, the unbreakable
swear, that you will give up
the offending one. Kiss him all over.
You didn’t mean to hurt his heart,
but you did.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 