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Renee Ashley's collection, SALT,
won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1991). Her second collection, THE
VARIOUS REASONS OF LIGHT, has been chosen as the inaugural poetry volume
for Avocet Press (
THE WAY WOMEN SWEAT
"Ladies don't sweat, dear. They glow."
-- Mother
Glow my ass. Women sweat
wet as the tongues of dogs,
wildly slick beneath the breasts, beneath
the arms the body's water,
the body's salts like an oily sea;
and, where the soft thighs part at the
open
mouth of the sex, where the dusky
flesh smothers, raw as an oyster, slick
as a throat, and bright like pearl or
shell
in the dark, the musty smell of rich
effluvium
lingers like air heavy with pollen and
heat.
OBSOLETE ANGEL
This one can't fly: he's got
stubby
wings, he's old
as space or time; he's gone
to
fat. And now he even
disregards the omens that he never
should
have learned to read
at all: blistered skies,
the
sticky secrets
in the bowels of toads.
He's used up his
store
of magic, he's half-blind,
but
he's crusty
as good bread and willing:
in
the moonlight,
he struggles up the shadows
towards
god, hears
the wheezing orchestration
of
embodied lives
-- he always sings low
his
one hoarse note,
always tumbles down to where
we
save him again
and again he falls
like
a hailstone
from some heaven
and
we will save him.
Simple
and the whole white sky descends a
grain
at a time—I with it and the threshold dis-
appearing. That we can find ourselves
in this. That some thing might sigh so
artless an exhalation (storm the oddest
word
for early, unearned sweetness, for
blinded
panes—brown dogs over their heads in blue
snow, their red hearts clanging, their
eyes
as good as sightless except for the
joy. For
the loss of that other, a better known
world).
Copyright © 2005 Renée Ashley All rights reserved
from Chautauqua
Literary Journal
Reprinted with permission
Chrys Tobey recently received her MFA in Creative
Writing from
For the Guy Who Raped
My Little Sister
May you be the one who sucked your thumb until you were thirteen,
too petrified to order a reese’s cup blizzard.
May you be the one who didn’t have a girlfriend
until you graduated from high school.
May you be the one who would scurry, like a mouse,
at the sound of your father’s baritone
voice.
May you be the delicate one,
like an antique necklace.
May your closest friend, the ex-football player,
the one who made everyone laugh as you
read in your room,
the one who validated you, know this,
know you’re unworthy of saying no.
And after you say no, three times,
may he restrain your thin thighs and shove
his dry cock into your ass.
May his beer and tequila words whisper,
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
May he go back, for seconds, thirds,
until the blood begins to trickle.
May your head be a red paper mache
as he throws it against his ivory
wall.
May your green eyes become pale as tears wash through,
while you try to think of something else,
anything else.
And after his cum has forced its way into your body
may you be left with little green and
yellow jellyfish
that sting your cock as they swim through,
scorching your urethra as they slowly drip
out.
Stones
If you make me stone
I will bruise you.
-Audre Lorde
Stones like missiles
headed straight for my forehead
as neighborhood boys
cackled from across wire fence.
And once I was made into stone,
though I didn’t bruise anyone,
my fifteen year old body
thrown across a boy’s room,
only bruising his wall.
Eventually the stones
transformed -
a bebe
through
my living room window,
pierced the back of my head,
hangers, picture frames, tables,
a fist, and beer cans
like stones aimed
at a blue jay.
The Crazy Bitch
My mother, the crazy bitch,
trembled: her arms around her
milk white legs, she swayed,
the way blinds sway after an
earthquake,
back and forth, back and forth.
Between the No, no, no’s
and I’m not crazy I found her,
surrounded by walls
as blonde as my hair.
As the no’s dissipated
the echo of crazy bitch
tip-toed down the hall.
Intruders
They arrive at all hours
(or maybe they never leave)
lurking in each shadowed crack,
waiting to slip through.
I used to sleep with pots and pans
beneath my windows
in case they wormed their way in.
After coming home late at night
I’d check each closet,
brush my long dresses aside
and sleep with one light on.
You can see them everywhere:
prowling street corners,
roaming through cereal aisles,
eating next to you,
drifting past you,
relentlessly looking (for you).
Beneath the sun’s view
they will find you,
their obtrusive eyes glaring
and nostrils flaring,
waiting to swallow you whole
using their pink lizard tongues.
Yellow, your stomach an acorn,
you walk a little faster,
check your shoulders - left and right -
walk beneath streetlamps,
change your route,
glance beneath cars,
carry your womanhood in a cage,
and bolt your bolts a little tighter,
waiting for the next uninvited guest.
§
Art by Sir Gawaine Ross
Ishtar -- Sir Gawaine
Ross,
Ishtar descended at one point into the
underworld, journey related as was Persephone’s, to the change of seasons.
There is also a considerable
Christian debt to Ishtar, for the origins of
Christian mythology being quite intertwined with that of pagan mythology. That
is seen in the ancient etymological relationship of Ishtar
with Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. He
name later gave rise to modern English "Easter". The leopards in the Rossian interpretation above are found as symbols in many
traditions, including the biblical one.
The Chickasaw Plum appreciates permission
to reproduce SirGawaine Ross’s Ishtar here.
The
Chickasaw
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