Tag: Human Trafficking

When You Think You’re Clean (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Taoists say there are 36,000
Goddesses and gods that reside in
The body. And they leave if
You don’t wash with the dawn because
They are disgusted. Sometimes
I am disgusted with my body to
Myself for all it has been touched and
Touched and spewed on so I
Don’t shower regularly enough unable to
Abide the touching of myself.

Or I remember the many times
My pimp almost drowned me in
A claw foot bathtub for some
Low earning insubordination and
How drowning makes your head feel
Huge and tight–a meat balloon ready
To burst meat and blood and
Offal all over the white tiled
Bathroom walls and it’s so
Hard to bathe regularly too.

But I wash my hands after I go
To the bathroom every time and
I hear all 36,000 goddesses and
Gods who have fled my filthy body to
My clean pink and pruny hands
Rejoice in the little cold baths
With honey soap and
A gentle toweling.

Personally I don’t think the goddesses and
Gods are so offended by human filth. I asked my favorite
God about it once and he
Agreed. He said, “You humans–
To a god, even when you think
You’re clean
You ain’t.”

Which is nice to know on days
When the ghosts of Johns and pimp
Make cleanliness in my eyes and
The 72,000 god eyes inside me
Next to impossible.

-M. Ashley

An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

An Escaped Prostitute Prays to Her Mother
I lie on the grass
On the soft dark ground
Inhaling the breast smell of
My lush mother. I wonder
Mother is your body so dark and
Life-giving because my blood
Was once soaked into it?

I don’t want to write about tears but
I cried when my feet bled
Weakly
Trying to escape my bondage in the night
Scuffing over jagged pebbles hidden in
Your dark body my Mother.

I fell to my knees. My knees and
Palms bled too. Rich earth made
Richer and richer. My tears softening
The soil—a salt green growing things can use.

Tears and blood like fear sweat and breast
Milk and flowing water take the easy path.

I got free my Mother
Eventually.

And have come to lie down in the fertile
Place my body made with yours.

Mother and daughter feeding
Each other. Mother and daughter breathing
Each other—air also
Takes the easy path. Lungs larynx
Mouth nose whisper whimper scream
All are easy until they are hard.

All are small before they are great.

And I forgive you. Because
This night you are forgivable.

For witnessing without saying
I do. This night. I forgive you.

-M Ashley

The Hookers of Mt. Vernon Bridge (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

The Mt. Vernon bridge will be destroyed
next year
and all the hookers will have to strut
the Santa Fe diesel yard instead.

Some of them will fall on the tracks,
get run over by trains that don’t run anymore,
and their sisters will have to tell their pimps
the unbelievable tale.

The pimps will beat the girls over the ghost trains
until they get superstitious about it,
inquire of the urine-soaked mystic
who works the empty storefront
of what used to be a boutique
for children’s baptism dresses,

For five dollars she’ll confirm a curse
and justify them—
tell them to go on beating the girls
but that they must kiss their rosaries
with each crack of the belt,
each break of a glistening rib,

they must force the girls to read a prayer
off the back of a dollar store bleeding Jesus candle
when otherwise they would have held each other
naked and cried
for a mortal mama who would not come.

They should go on beating the girls.
The mystic shrugs and rolls an addict
wrapped in a government blanket
out of her shady spot

They should go on beating the girls
because what can you do
in a town that wants to survive so badly
despite all the young mothers
and trains and pimps and saints
telling it to lie down and die
to hush now and sleep
to rock-a-bye baby
to shut the fuck up, stop crying, and close its eyes.

-M. Ashley