I could ruin him by his lips
allow the flesh salt
of my pink finger pads
to desiccate the delicate
membranes
to petrify them
forever
together.
-M.
Communion Delirium
He stained my skin with the fruit of his godhood
crushed young strawberries down against my soft places
left listless trails of bruise and pulp
He placed one and another between my teeth
and commanded I bite like I
was an uncivilized thing
close enough to the leaves and stem
to taste the bitter break
between god and creation.
-M.
Tongues
That he and he and I
could lie
down in a bed together
just to lie
to speak of inner things
to lie
to lie
this bed bears no jealousy.
-M.
Single Fruit of a Young Pomegranate Tree
Stone-heavy, it bows its branch to the black
earth. Oxidized blood brown
hints at a cheering red which might have been.
Striated. Scuffed like shoe leather
worn away from starving children’s toes
clenching and unclenching the kilometers
of an August death march.
-M.
In the Style of Clementi
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.
Button Poetry’s Poetry Chapbook Contest
It seems this summer is full of excellent chapbook contests. Get up, get out there, and get that book published! -M.
The Plutonic Graces
My one beauty
my one pure thing,
I can’t heal you.
I can’t.
The fever’s in your girlish mind.
My hands fail me—
are clawed up by morning.
There is nothing I can hold
through the night.
I have been there before.
Let me focus on my wine,
plying lust.
Play along with me.
Let me hurt you a little more.
Crawl down here with me,
willing.
I’ve given up the face of God.
Yours will do.
Let me scour the trusting flesh
from your cheeks
with stony grave dirt
and self-prophecy.
Rub your nose in it—
cologne
and your blossoming body
of sorrows
still heady in my clothes.
Your scent is changed now.
Woman,
let me thrust into your hands
wet loam and loathing
rotting limp leaves and spoil.
Make glory of them for me
I beg you—
it is all I have left as a man.
You have been a guiding light
and I will never
let you
leave me.
-M.
Jazz God Has Wrath
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.
An Aging God Considers His Birthplace
Golden Sexuality sits by an open window
his hair shining, his lean legs crossed.
He considers the cave-riddled hills
wearing their shadowy green
the glacier-strike lake they curve into
born cold, gone balmy, rippling life.
He remembers stag chases
trysts in the leaves—the fleshy
shock and shudder discovering
exposed roots with his bare back.
He sinks his consciousness into the water
the fingertip tendrils of his god-form first
followed by his instinct-flexed shoulders
still warm from the running catch
his hollow chest where the feral heart echoes
root-wounded back
crossed legs
golden, shining hair.
-M.
Dinner Conversation with a Horny God
![2004_1799[1]](https://mnashley.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2004_17991.jpg?w=656)
M. N. Ashley 
