Writing Life
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.)
Novice at the stand
Goddess of War guides me
Her peaceful estate
Keeping still the woof
Warp to warp
Hand to hook
Hook to thread to hand
Pull to click
Through to click
Bend
Hand to hook to hand.
-M
(Day 16 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
I’m going to marry him—
All the men my
Mind has a crush on.
No one finds Aldous
Huxley as hot as I do
Nor wants to share the
Bed as much with that
Angle-faced man.
-M.
(Day 15 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
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)
Dragging the little tree’s
Corpse behind me a
Diatribe to the heatwaves
Rising from the cement
It’s not you, little tree
Doing what little trees do
Maybe even trying to
Shade the porch in
Your little tree ugly
Intrusive volunteer way.
It’s not you little tree
It’s the gardener
Who let you grow
Lets the rose bushes
Grow too
Evil arms that reach and
Grab in the walk
Blind to anything
Apparently
But mow and go—
Especially go.
-M.
(Day 9 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Wire and crimson crepe paper
Feathers flexed
Full span against the
Hurricane that doused the
Firestorm from which the
Wearer of the wings
Was born
-M.
(Day 8 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Draw and quarter my life
all lies
all the same their shelter
pooling in the gaps between
limb and limb
and limb
and limb
-M.
(Day 7 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Artificial blue to beat the blues
No sugar in your cookie, Cookie
Cutter approaches don’t often
Help problematic inflammation in the gray
Matter of fact exercise
Is another lever we can pull
Me closer Dr. Beautiful
Blues—nothing artificial about you-oo
Tell me again
How the mental health benefits of exercise
Cap at thirty minutes so I can’t
Lap sad to death in the beautiful chlorine blue.
-M.
She sheds herself
one rough skin at a time,
drops them dripping into the hamper,
and, naked innards walking,
drags the dripping hamper
to a sly-smiled laundress
who has her discount ticket pre-filled.
Heavy duty cycle, she says,
and remember,
hang is the only way to dry.
-M.
Holding yourself close to yourself
the record skips
the song is long over.
No room for the Holy Spirit
the nun with the flashlight will say
when she ejects you from the dance.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 