This January hibiscus bud
Kissed by absence of color
My albino fingers exploring the
Hard petals the shy face of
A goddess willing to be
Searched blindly by the blind
Whose blindness comes from
Looking too much into the light.
-M.
Hibiscus Kissed
Photo Poetry: Perfect Winter
My neighbor’s yard man runs
the mower over what is essentially
prickly dirt. I stand watching
under a bare tree whose branches
curl a come-hither. I notice myself
conspicuous and pervy watching
the yard man, my fidgety hands in
my pockets. This would all be perfect
Southern California Winter—me,
bare tree, pockets, pervyness,
yellow yard, yard man outrunning
the mild chill. All perfect had all
these things not been dead
since Spring.
-M.
Photo Poetry: God Flower
Shadow at the tips and
Shadow at the center like
A god who is honest about
What it means to be a god.
Absence
Presence
Glory
Absence
-M.
I am legally blind so I know—photography is a weird sport for me. What I am finding so lovely about it though is that I am often capturing with the camera things I would have never seen with my naked eye. To me, in the bright day, this gazania looked like a simple white blur on a field of messy green. It wasn’t until I got home and started working with the picture that I saw all it’s beautiful purple and that soft explosion of orange at the center. I look forward to many more visual surprises the camera is bound to catch for m.
Creative Nonfiction, Fears, Personal Essay, Photo Playbook Challenge, Photography, Prose, Writing Life, Writing On Writing
Photo Prose: Dread Box
Picking up any pen is hard. Opening my notebook is one of the Herculean trials—the hard one.
Getting past the rickety-ness is worse still. It’s like hearing Atlas’ ancient knees pop as he hefts the Earth one more day. One more day. One more day.
I dread goals. I dread the lazy, yawning “what next” after I reach one. I dread not reaching any.
I dread being a flake—but worse, a joyless flake. No one loves a joyless flake like no one loves a fat person who is not jolly. I dread also being the fat person who is not jolly.
I dread my credit card payments. I keep my dreaded credit cards under my dreaded pens to keep me from the dreadful using them.
I keep lip balm under the dread pens and cards. Most of all, I dread being kissed unready.
-M.
Photography Playbook Prompt: Something you dread.
Photo Poetry: I Must Burn
Arrogance reaching
back a hollow throat
tells Her the gifts
you gave me
aren’t
good enough.
The path you
laid too
clear.
The dark you
made to lathe
my wounds in
much
too soft.
Give me
the sun.
I must blister.
I must burn.
-M.
Photo Prompt: Your Dark Side
I had fun with this one. I used a fish eye lens—my first successful experience with that. I played with the color a little in processing, but most of that is the natural light that comes in my office through the dark pink drapes.
I did a lot of selfies first, (the one below I like a lot), and I seemed to get a good bead on “depression” which is certainly a darker side of me, but I think the sad arrogance I got in the first photo is far more on point when it comes to personal darkness.
Sort of weird to start the year on the dark side, but I can say the bright side it exposes is knowing that even though I am low vision, I can find fun and creative expression in photography that is meaningful to me. May your 2021 be marvelous and full of opportunities to let your creative light shine.
Artless Grief
I’ve had personal disasters
gluing a doily to the back of
a dollar store glass plate
Jesus quote sandwiched
In between. I cried
in front of my mother’s
church ladies, all
wrinkled and off center
the doily I mean. My
mother quilts dreams
and sews inspiration for
the whole of the female
church body. I unspool
thread everywhere and
haven’t the gift to finish the
thread things I start. I
couldn’t running backstitch
my way out of a wet
paper bag. What sort of a
Woman am I? My hands make
words not things. By the Word
the world was formed says He
who IS the church body. He
can’t understand my artless grief
who died for our sins yet still
found the time to craft the
mountains and thread the stars.
-M.
(Photography Playbook Prompt: Something you covet.)
Aura Lit
Downtown
by the twilit
abandoned
occult shop
nestled next door
the blue lit
coffee spot
A man paces
the length
a white lit
parking spot
argues with air
bites it off
His aura
the blue lit
coffeehouse
witch kids clack
is black.
-M.
San Bernardino Christmas
We, none of us, have money
for this. We put up the cross, but
the garage door is still broken.
The cross leans back like a goal
post about to be torn
asunder by the underdogs who
have won the game at last.
We may not be winning
the game at last, but we know
how to tear shit down
even and especially if
it’s our own.
The city tree that was already
dead in October from heat and
disease and not Mother Nature’s
glorious turning—we
put three black sparkly
ornaments on it for Halloween.
Child thieves stole two of them
that night—probably the only real
treat in their lifeless bags.
They Left one out of guilt or
respect.
Out of guilt or
respect,
we left that one there
for Jesus.
-M.
66 Day Poetry Habit: Day 1
Creative Nonfiction, Fears, Personal Essay, Photo Playbook Challenge, Photography, Prose, Writing Life, Writing On Writing
Not “My” but “Our” Worst Fear
Let’s get vulnerable with each other. Let’s get naked and play the mirror game. Let’s do it in front of a group of twenty-somethings with their whole brilliant lives ahead of them. Let us let them sit cross-legged in a circle around us and let us let them bombard us with questions as we try to mirror each other’s movements exactly.
We’ll have to answer honestly and be beastly to ourselves in this game because it is impossible to lie focused only on each other, move for move, even down to the twitch in the corner of my mouth and yours when someone lazily lobs, “What is your worst feat?”
We say, “This.”
We are afraid of this. We are afraid of only ever being as good as each other, locked in the hopelessness of leprous perfectionism. Not singly—mutually. Each other’s. Always each other’s.
We are afraid of this: falling short, move for move, in each other’s eyes forever.
-M.
Too Much Time Like Too Much Money
Having too much time is like having too much money—it’s an asshole thing to complain about, but still a problem.
Whoever painted this mystery on my street—likely an alien—knew clearly where she was going and clearly where everyone else should be and what we all should avoid. She knew to tell everyone that if they dug here, something terrible would explode. Warning was the alien’s meaningful work.
She wrote: It would all go down in February.
Someone who came after—likely a human, likely me with my one blue running foot rudely in the shot—must have had too much time on her hands—an asshole problem—and, grasping around for something to fill her hours, investigated the alien’s code, aware only of its mystery and not its warning. She must have taken the arrow to indicate her life path and dug there foolishly—hoping to find her purpose entombed in the asphalt. Instead, our Pandora released the malicious thing, nailing her, the wise alien, and everyone else who had heretofore been busy.
It all went down in February.
Every now and then she comes out to kneel by the blackened hole in the cracked and cracking street. She cranes her neck to observe the bloom of the mushroom cloud she made and picks gravel from under her unmanicured nails. Locked down like all of us, she has all the time in the world for this.
She wonders dangerously, “What now?”
-M.
M. N. Ashley 