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. Ashley
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. Ashley
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky lucky
lucky lucky
Lucky
lucky
Me
-M. Ashley
All gone to oranges now
once flamed with pink on spring green tendrils
that climbed our matching dresses to touch
the shocking white of our lacy bib collars
accented at the throat with plum satin bows.
My sister smiles a broad white that reflects
my broken child’s hair. I smile with my teeth
out a touch. Light bounces from the lenses of my
half-transitioned Coke bottles, near permanently
dim, to one of my sister’s neatly arranged
auburn Botticelli curls—one twist of many
about her I envy.
We each have one hand on a taxidermy-stiff,
red eyed plush bunny the photographer
shoved between us to encourage
something shared and quiet.
The closest he got us to sisterhood that day
was leaned-away touching at the shoulder—
the furthest torso point from our hearts.
All gone to adulthood now
and Valentine’s Day vacuum cleaners
received with kisses like hand cut doilies,
my sister and I have become
pre-midlife reawakened to something like
crystal-sucking New Agers without
the liberalism, too much nature stuff,
or any urgent concerns about the patriarchy.
I step off the train on a wet, sky-spitting Saturday night
to celebrate my sister’s 29th-again birthday.
There is streaked silver in the puddles through which
the train runs, upside down, loping on to LA.
My sister wears a demure sweater as accent
to a royal purple petticoat that flounces
in the whoosh of the train.
I wear an oversized silver lotus petal with seven
fake stones masking a magnifying glass behind.
We hug.
-M. Ashley
We are the gods of piss and bile—
dead skin that flakes from the body
mingles with dust and sweat
makes a sweet filthy paste
worn in the groin and under the breasts.
We are the gods of ashes—
rendered fat that drips from
a wide-eyed sacrifice,
pristine bone, survivor of the fire,
that glints and pings against
the grinder blade
makes the stuff for sausages.
-M. Ashley
Pronounced to rhyme with
“Base.” I’m not that fancy the
Bright flowers are fake.
-M. Ashley
On a frequency we mostly ignore
the city council speaks with a single
yawning head
about a great, gray,
bewildering bus
that authorizes right turns only
that only invisible riders ride
that lurches
up and down the city’s
collapsing artery
to nowhere pleasant
in particular.
-M. Ashley
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. Ashley
Father Time is the G-rated
Version of the voracious
God who ate his children.
Father Time taps his
Tick-tock at me gently
Sighs, smiles, shrugs and
Smooths his lustrous beard.
The voracious god, belly
Full of children
Looks me up and down and
Makes rude comments about
How my tits used to be higher.
I trust this god more.
Our relationship is complicated.
When he leans in for a kiss
His breath stinks like children
And it gets my childless womb
All in an uproar.
I kiss him back anyway. I kiss
Him passionately until his
Breath smells like safe sex,
Liquor on weeknights, and
A liberation I’m not even sure
I believe in. It makes him gag
And vomit up his precious children.
-M. Ashley
We sat at the table with less light
you picked carefully.
Nervous, I walked around it the wrong way
twice.
I had walked around the car the wrong way too
before stepping up onto the curb.
I hope you didn’t see that.
I had trouble finding the door.
Before,
I padded through my cool bedroom
getting dressed, getting ready,
and stuck the mascara wand directly
in my eye.
I forgot here and there
which garment came after which—and
I tell you it’s a miracle I met you
with my bra on under my clothes.
Inside you found me,
dressed and made up with the same
kind of hot trouble that adorns your coffee.
I did one eyebrow darker than the other
accidentally
but only worried about you noticing
in the fraction of time it took
for us to embrace
and stake the flag of our friendship
through the vanquished body of fear.
No self-consciousness here. No need.
Not one.
We held hands and spoke of esoteric things.
I will tell you the light was all yours
that attracted a witness prowling for converts
and a man with a chaos tattoo.
The prowler wanted to suffocate the light.
The tattooed man poked it curiously.
And I sat looking with one dark eyebrow raised
loving you for it—
for your fire
for your shadows too. Call. Call.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 