Controlled Substances (NaPoMo Day 4)

Posted on April 4, 2017April 4, 2017 by M. Ashley

My pharmacist’s assistant boyfriend
gained weight.
It brings us closer as our fingers
touch over the Hydrocodone
and our wrinkles show
and our noses shine
under the fluorescent lights.

I say in a low voice
You know they’re for my mother.

He leans forward and says
so gently
I know. I remember you.

I tell him they’re for my mother every time
to prompt his sweet nothing.
I am unashamed. I flounce
out of the pharmacy with my narcotics
and swing my hips with purpose.

-M.

(I’m starting a little late for National Poetry Month’s 30 in 30. I owe you three. I’m on it.)

Shush

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by M. Ashley

I could ruin him by his lips
allow the flesh salt
of my pink finger pads
to desiccate the delicate
membranes

to petrify them
forever
together.

-M.

God Poems, Love Poems, Poetry

Tongues

Posted on August 16, 2015 by M. Ashley

That he and he and I
could lie
down in a bed together
just to lie

to speak of inner things
to lie
to lie
this bed bears no jealousy.

-M.

God Poems, Love Poems, Poetry

Lie

Posted on June 19, 2015 by M. Ashley

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 freshly turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.

-M.

Love Poems, Poetry

The House on Doheny

Posted on June 18, 2015June 18, 2015 by 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 or so
to meet your execting standards.

How deep, my Darling,
are your lightless pockets?

-M.

Love Poems, Poetry

Some Fantasies You Keep Only for a Day (poem)

Posted on February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by M. Ashley

like the one about the red blouse
the sunglasses,
the black shoes with red stitching—

meeting for the first time, again, and
being able to walk on his arm
in the bright sun without stumbling.

-M.

Humor Poem, Love Poems, Poetry

Dearest Dr. Link, I Still Love Your Buttons (poem)

Posted on February 24, 2015 by 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
hot-girl 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.

M. N. Ashley