Category: Misc Poetry

Dogs (NaPoMo Day 5)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Dogs have races. Dogs have war.
Dogs have Shakespeare.
I think someone ate a dog in some
Shakespeare play.
I got that from a movie where a teacher
taught Shakespeare.
Simulacra upon simulacra
the coolest concept in sociology.

I see a dog in a meadow. He is well cared for.
Sometimes when we think of dogs
we get a pain in the pit of our stomachs because
we think of dogs being mistreated.
Innocence makes us fear guilt.
Little children sing creepy songs in horror movies
give us the chills.

Serial killer has the heart of a child.
Animals are innocent.
Shark seeks food and procreation
the height of evolution.
Lamb of God doesn’t bleat
on the bloody altar.

-M.

Blood Magic

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Cailleach 2In the wake of receiving new eyes—
ball and white, red and black—
my intellectually adoptive grandmother
has departed her own gnarled hand,
likely moved on by neglect.

In her place the Scottish hag
Cailleach of my blood,
the same gnarled hand but missing
ring and pinky.

A red leather bracelet
sewn to my wrist—involuntary surgery—
whispers sanguinely to the half
of my innards that still
belong to the ragged dead hung on
my right ankle as I exited the womb.

-M.

In the Style of Clementi

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I reached down to play and forgot how it went
this piece I wrote when I wanted to be a composer.
All I could play then was Clementi’s sonatinas
so a sonatina is what I wrote and noted
In the style of Clementi to give the unintentionally pedantic
arpeggios some gravitas.

It was easy enough then for my fingers to churn
on the left hand and twiddle on the right.
But now, silent stacks of sheet music behind me,
leaning towers of dog-eared Film Score Monthly,
my battered mind turns her back on the fingers that long
for the old twiddle and churn
back when the books held more hope than silverfish,
when the room used to be bright,
when the piano was only a little out of tune.

-M.

Jazz God Has Wrath

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I wrote poetry about
jazz long before I
earned it, listened to or
liked it.

Now I
purr and deliquesce—
can’t consume enough.

The god of jazz, whichever slinky
Power he may be punishes
my ears by
insatiable hunger, my
dissonant heart by
terminal syncopation.

-M.

Eau de Summer Camp (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

The base note has something to do with
sunscreen—a fair haired girl’s
most important piece of camping gear
next to bug spray
which is the sharp second layer of the scent.
The whiff of stiff, chlorinated towels,
unwashed and hot from the top
of the waist-high chain link fence
they were draped over to dry
completes the first perfumer’s chord.

For nuance, a drop of happy sweat
from happy children come to wash
their hands and faces with pink powdered soap
from lime green metal dispensers
hung over shabby sinks
on which daddy long legs perch
each rolling their eight dull eyes
at the rush and frivolity of the new generation.

-M.

Image is Everything in a College Cafeteria (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

One of the work-study cafeteria
workers took to drawing pictures
with a dry erase pen on the
sneeze guards over the entrees.

There was a speckled pink pig
for pork chops that had a conversation
bubble squeal (exclamation point)
above his terrified head.

There was a smiling, four-legged octopus,
(making him a quadrapus?)
above a tray of congealing seafood pasta
dyed, inexplicably, emerald green.

Mr. Peanut dapper-danced above the
orange peanut butter chicken
and a culturally insensitive meatball
thumbs-upped the scarlet Italian delight.

The artist slept in mornings though
leaving the breakfast sneeze guards bare
and me left to figure for myself
which mystery muffin was which.

I’d choose one at random and quickly
to appease the snarling line behind me
stacking into a long, contemptuous curve,
eyes on my body, eyes on my choice…

Inevitably I’d end up with the loathsome
banana nut which I would eat
alone, hands shaking
huddled in a bathroom stall.

-M.