Writing Life
Dear god, I would prefer
You not
Carry me over the rocks
I would prefer
You let my feet touch earth
Once in a while
A smothering love
That atrophies my appendages—
Hobbles my run and walk
Is no proper penance
For absenteeism and
Hard neglect
And me allowing it—
The crippling love
Is no proper forgiveness
Find another way
Find another way
Find another way
-M.
(Day 5 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
It could be anything
An orange peel
Sunset on a fractured path
Sunrise
On a fractured path
Cellulite on a fake-tanned
Thigh gone terribly wrong
Funky cheese
See here. See here. See here.
I’ve got my pointer out
Round the borders with every
Line-measure of words
But
Did you notice
Never on the actual
Thing
My frustration is quantifiable
I’ve made a chart
See here. See here. See here.
Just to the left of the
Glowing picture screen
Reader
I think we have both
Lost touch
It might have been longing
It might have been
Sunset on a fractured heart
Or some such
Trite shit as that
I give
Give up with me
Let’s call it
Funky cheese
Put our heads down on our desks
And take a nap
Poetry sucks anyway
-M.
(Day 4 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Campus communist relegated to
Literal red square, painted
Cockeyed on the sidewalk
Apathy! Apathy!
Everyone is occupied
He throws his hands and
Pamphlets up
-M.
(Day 3 of the 66 Day Poetry Habit)
A god in golden overalls leans
Out the driver’s side of an open
Lincoln in the drive-thru
Late night
Tries not to puke
Pukes anyway.
Smiles
Checks his watch
Pays too much for his tacos
Pays too much for our tacos too
Swerves off
We won’t forget it
Who could forget him
He won’t remember
How he got home
-M.
(Day 2 of the 66 Day Poetry Habit)
Artificial blue to beat the blues
No sugar in your cookie, Cookie
Cutter approaches don’t often
Help problematic inflammation in the gray
Matter of fact exercise
Is another lever we can pull
Me closer Dr. Beautiful
Blues—nothing artificial about you-oo
Tell me again
How the mental health benefits of exercise
Cap at thirty minutes so I can’t
Lap sad to death in the beautiful chlorine blue.
-M.
A soul heavy as wet July.
Steam rising from the grass
lazily curling and uncurling its come-hither fist
in blue efficiency streetlight.
Windows fog over
in droplet-streaming screens obscuring
the midnight hush-your-mouth in each
of a line of bricked and columned houses.
This is a city morally opposed to sidewalks,
where stoplights go down at eleven.
This is a city whose treacherous shoulders I trudged
for a decade in the dark.
-M.
She sheds herself
one rough skin at a time,
drops them dripping into the hamper,
and, naked innards walking,
drags the dripping hamper
to a sly-smiled laundress
who has her discount ticket pre-filled.
Heavy duty cycle, she says,
and remember,
hang is the only way to dry.
-M.
Usually when we speak of gender bias, the first thing that comes to mind is the literary feats of old dead white dudes still controlling the standards by which works of literature are measured today, regardless of the author’s race, gender, socio-economic status, etc. Or we speak of the white guys who are still alive and kicking having an upper hand in getting grants, getting agents, getting published, getting attention, getting press, getting prizes, getting better grants, and round and round we go. But the gender bias I want to talk about is far more insidious. Those things I mentioned earlier certainly create a problem that needs to be addressed, but there is a pernicious undercurrent of another form of gender bias among writers that can potentially harm their efforts so early on that they will never get past the very early stages of publishing, let alone into the realm of real recognition, regardless of the depth of their talent. This gender bias has directly to do with the quagmire of questions that are: What does and what does not make a woman? What does and what does not make a man?
My ancient fiction professor at Vanderbilt once told us about a man he knew who drank Dr. Pepper hot. When work was over, this man would get into his after-fives and stir it in a saucepan over low heat, delicately, like he was handling milk. “Sometimes,” Professor Sullivan said, “it’s all right to let your characters take life a little too far.”
-M.
I am not a long-write poet and suspect, by nature, I never will be. Most of the time, I see much more value in longer works than in what I produce, (read as: “most of the time I see more value in what everyone else in the world is doing except me”). In this insecurity, I am like a child who stubbornly believes ten one dollar bills will always be worth more than one twenty dollar bill.
A friend of mine once told me he doubts I have the attention span for long-write. Possibly. More likely though, I’ve got an addict’s taste for hit-and-run.
-M.
M. N. Ashley 