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.
Some Fantasies You Keep Only for a Day (poem)
Category: Poetry
Dearest Dr. Link, I Still Love Your Buttons (poem)
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.
Talent (poem)
I may not be
the great burst of light,
but I will hang on by my teeth
until my jaw splits
and still
my teeth will be hanging.
-M.
The Sheep of Little Mountain (poem)
In spring when I was a child,
a red dog barked every day on Little Mountain
where insubordinate sheep swore back at him
and also the shepherd—
their bells clanging against the epithets
The shepherd, hot and blasé about it
by mid-afternoon,
sat in the shade of his trailer
eating cheese and day old bread
he shared with the dog
but not with the foul-mouthed sheep—
that don’t come anymore,
the barking and swearing replaced
with gunshots
and drunk singing
and the chop of ghetto bird blades
echoing against the dead yellow slopes.
-M.
His Beauty Threw Me (poem)
and I fell off the curb
and
from under my skirt
from under my pantyhose
the dry gutter stripped
the skin from my weakened knees
spread wide
by the fall.
-M.
Eau de Summer Camp (poem)
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.
For Phileo
This passionate arm
this burnt and featherless wing
this discarded veil
streaming blood and salt water
down her back.
This uncovered
unholy
mouth these
godly undoings.
Her warriorhood
her faithless offering
her purity portioned out
among the deathless
clamoring dead and deadly
clamored living.
Phileo,
my own heart also—
cruel and shining
as the capricious smile
of a golden god.
-M.
Image is Everything in a College Cafeteria (poem)
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.
Dishes (poem)
Loose grime and stringy meat
that comes away in the water
and lies in wait by the drain,
tangled in the silverware,
ready to snarl like seaweed
around the pruned fingers that clutch
in the dark to clean the forks and knives.
Cold, gray and scuzzy water—
reason to fear sharks below,
to fear the chum they’ve spit out
not good enough to get stuck between their teeth,
not good enough to wave alongside the gristle
from where a surfer’s arm was severed
uncleanly from its shoulder.
-M.
Never Write While Hungry (poem)
You’ll roll from aisle to aisle
aimless and slow
eyeballing the shiniest packages first
overhead and at foot
at your groin and at your twitching nose.
You’ll make better bad choices
(still bad choices)
fill your cart with loud
brightly powdered crunchies
that exercise your jaw
but stain your hands
without so much as a goodnight kiss
or any nutritional value at all.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 