Writing Life
If you tell the truth
Knowing
No one will believe you
Thereby
Intentionally obscuring
The truth
Did you lie?
Is a lie a lie or
Does a lie have lie-ness?
Is truth on the lips
But a lie in your heart
Merely
A lie that can’t commit?
If the root is a lie
But the tree is true
Where do the limbs lie?
Is it the letter of the lie
Or the spirit?
Lie with me, Spirit–letter
Lips and limbs.
-M.
If you ask for blessing
With both fists clenched
Where does your lover
Lay the present
And how do you
Unwrap it?
-M.
The Star is the center. All
Things revolve around it—the
Room, dimly lit—the flashing
Optics—gilded mirrors that
Turn on time—doors pulling
Themselves open and closed—
Gears, wheels, sprockets,
Springs—gods, humanity—
All dizzy things.
-M.
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky
lucky
Me
-M.
Dogwood snow in blue
Efficiency light, midnight
Red earth, grass, shadows
Receive the floral frost
I lie in blue efficiency
Light, midnight
In green satin pajamas on
Green, Spring grass
Shade trees hide the
Moonlight. Starlight too
Does not touch Earth
Here. Only my bare feet
My bare fingers, my
White light hair tangled
In green, Spring grass
And falling dogwood snow.
My bare feet bleed
This night, like so many nights
Having fled and found jagged
Gray rocks hidden in the grass
I have fallen here
My flight this night will be
Unsuccessful. He will find me
Anyway though I am green
In the green grass
White in the blue light
Red blood on red earth
Silent as dogwood snow.
-M.
It’s like noticing your boobs
Are shaped differently than all
The other girls’ boobs. Or their
Boobs are shaped differently
Than yours.
Is that good?
You shouldn’t need a boy to
Tell you, but you really kind of
Want a boy to tell you, and
You really kind of only want
Him to be honest if the news
Is good.
-M.
Pronounced to rhyme with
Base. I’m not that fancy. The
Bright flowers are fake.
-M.
Squeezing for juice the
Oranges of the gods sounds
Like a holy testicle trap
A love so large
Deity by the balls
Happens. Praise the gods
And pass the juice glass.
Mercy is a soft hand and
Goes both ways.
-M.
Is he the black dog in the night when
it’s noon and all the lights are on,
or is he the star around which
noon and all the light revolves. To know
him with bare eyes is blindness. We see
him once, poorly, and never anything again
but the flash burned into our corneas—
the red, the lightening purple, the terrible
white. The half memory our only light.
And he would still not be
black dog in the night,
nor black dog at noon.
He would still be the light itself
and we irreversible, starless, dying.
-M.
Says she was a willful child—
the little girl who chopped a
row of her mother’s tall flowers
down for looking at her
funny when she came home from
school. She planted snapdragons
where the mocking birds of
paradise had been. Snapdragons’
faces are fierce too, but sweeter.
They don’t speak unless spoken to.
They only laugh when a hand is
applied to their delicate jaws.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 