Tag: Writing

Arrowhead Farms (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Unincorporated island—
city corpus surrounds this
dusty stump
where no appendage grew,
no sidewalks either. All negative
space—all septic. Streetlights
are rare.

Casual murders In the night,
in its little triangular park occur
by desert exposure, by gangs
statistically impressive.

Twitching bodies in the weedy sand.
Rigor mortis limbs, one tangled
in a swing—seat and chain—
one stretched for shelter
of the sun-disfigured slides.

-M. Ashley

I have officially posted every day in April for NaPoWriMo! I’ve never completed it before. Thank you all for reading along. Onward and forward!

Dearest Dr. Link, I Still Love Your Buttons (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Your School of Music staff picture made
you out to be so much uglier than
you actually are so
I couldn’t show my friends, so
we couldn’t fan ourselves with our
fangirl palms and drool together over
you.

I couldn’t make them understand the
dark-haired, fair-faced impetus for
trotting a mile to class in
the actual spiked Mary Janes that
made de Sade himself blanch—

what pale, long-fingered hand moving
half notes from here to there delectability made
me choose the long sensuous skirt with
the long sensuous slit, (oh mid 90’s rage!)

what high-toned atonal muscle, what
used-to-be-high-school-outcast humor
made me squeeze my thighs together
surreptitiously between
this-will-be-on-the-quiz cues.

Dr. Link—may I call you Stan—
of course I may, I
was also madly in love with
every single silver button on
your early spring black jacket.

-M. Ashley

Image Is Everything in a College Cafeteria (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

One of the work-study cafeteria
workers took to drawing pictures
with a dry erase pen on the
sneeze guards over the entrees.

There was a speckled pink pig
for pork chops that had a conversation
bubble squeal (exclamation point)
above his terrified head.

There was a smiling, four-legged octopus,
(making him a quadrapus?)
above a tray of congealing seafood pasta
dyed, inexplicably, emerald green.

Mr. Peanut dapper-danced above the
orange peanut butter chicken
and a culturally insensitive meatball
thumbs-upped the scarlet Italian delight.

The artist slept in mornings though
leaving the breakfast sneeze guards bare
and me left to figure for myself
which mystery muffin was which.

I’d choose one at random and quickly
to appease the snarling line behind me
stacking into a long, contemptuous curve,
eyes on my body, eyes on my choices…

And inevitably I’d end up with the
loathsome banana nut which I would
eat alone, hands shaking
huddled in a bathroom stall.

-M. Ashley

Nightmares of Oklahoma (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

It’s going to be over a hundred here
this weekend
so roaches have started coming up
from under the slab. Great big ones
of the outdoor variety looking for water
and morsels of dog food.

It gives me nightmares of Oklahoma,
of poverty, of you
leaving empty syruped peach cans
on the floor,
open cereal boxes on the counter,
making coffee anyway in a machine
the water container of which
was infested with molting nymphs.

You called them albino roaches,
Fucker,
and laughed and said
I was your freakshow baby.

-M. Ashley

Eau de Summer Camp (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

The base note has something to do with
sunscreen—a fair haired girl’s
most important piece of camping gear
next to bug spray
which is the sharp second layer of the scent.
The whiff of stiff, chlorinated towels,
unwashed and hot from the top
of the waist-high chain link fence
they were draped over to dry
completes the first perfumer’s chord.

For nuance, a drop of happy sweat
from happy children come to wash
their hands and faces with pink powdered soap
from lime green metal dispensers
hung over shabby sinks
on which daddy long legs perch
each rolling their eight dull eyes
at the rush and frivolity of the new generation.

-M. Ashley

Eve’s Naked Existence (creative nonfiction)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.”
-Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

I wonder if, when Eve came along, Adam was as much in wonder with her naked existence as he was with the plants and birds and butterflies and the approved fruits, because we all know he didn’t even think about the unapproved fruit until evil Eve came along.

I wonder if, the seed of evil and rebellion apparently already in her, she was jealous at first that Adam did look at her naked existence with the same sight he used for the trees and butterflies and approved fruit. She was nothing special, or, I should say, she was equally special and no woman wants to feel that. I know it would hurt my heart if a man looked at an orange with the same kind of wonderment he looked at me. I would probably take it as a comment on my cellulite. I doubt I shared that in common with Eve before the fall because I’m sure god didn’t create her with cellulite. Or maybe he did and cellulite is divine and the only thing that convinces us that it isn’t is the evil rottenness that came out of evil Eve doing her thing.

If she had only known that first bite would mean a world full of Adam for the rest of eternity, no longer as enchanted with the orange as he was with her body, but forever commenting on it and, “If I don’t look at the orange with lusty innocence any more, then what makes you think I want to look at your orange skin thighs?

-M. Ashley

Letter to a Friend (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ 2 Comments

It’s like we live a great distance apart
and come to visit sometimes,
but usually when the other is away.
We walk around, touch the dust kindly,
see we’ve both been busy breaking
and stacking colored glass in the windowsills—
methodical about hue and striation.
This one is like a bear and this one a bird.
This one is like a wave and this one a glacier.
This one is sunlight. This one is also sunlight.

How are you? I’m embarrassed it’s been so long.
I know there has been so much and I care very much.
I hope you know.

-M. Ashley

Ophelia’s Opal (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

When my grandmother knew she was dying
she picked out an opal for me,
had a ring designed
and sized it,
for the short time being,
for her own hand.
I was an infant then, recently diagnosed
lifelong colorless and could-be blind.

My grandmother was a force—
a farm girl who took beatings
for sneaking away to read,
a young woman who left her family
to work among foul mouthed boys
at the Pentagon during WWII,
a single mother,
a stone wall,
razor tongue,
acid wit,
first female management at the FAA.

She held me at the hospital
in a hallway while the final diagnosis
was pronounced to my parents
in a tiny, sterile room.
Her breast was warm,
though the breathing behind it was labored.
Her embrace was soothing
though her hands were not soft
from folding crust-cut sandwiches in wax paper
for her children or grandchildren’s outings
of uncomplicated youth.

She explored my hot face and closed eyelids
with her wise yet diminishing fingers,
the opal slipping forward and upside down
under her nearly exposed knuckle,
resting against my forehead,
cooling a spot just above my eyes.
She leaned forward and blessed me,
“My dear little Michelle-y,
I do hope you can see.”

-M. Ashley

Heavy Duty Cycle (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ 1 Comment

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. Ashley

Durian (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

For his seventeenth birthday, I bought my Thai stepson a green, spiny
“poo poo” fruit, the proper name for which is “durian,” the mighty stench—

abject suffering—one of the Four Noble Truths spoken by Buddha
grounding in our physicality, merciless as dirty diapers.

He’d been craving the delicate, baneful brown-yellow fruit flesh for months,
spoke of it often, pining, a taste of sunny childhood in Phuket

laid sensually against the teeth, tongue, and palate, lilting comfort
like the sonorous language he had to exchange for stark, clipped our English.

-M. Ashley