Renée Ashley

 

Wine Not Water Fish Not Frogs


Everything in the garden of the world. The small
cup of her. Gratitude and those birds pulling down

the sky. What weighs most on a god’s scale -- other
than a god? My mother told me her first father killed

her other father. I found this in a note, it’s my writing
– she did not tell me how. Or I’ve forgotten again.

From here all I can see is roofs but I can hear the sea.
Hear birds in the inlet three doors down but the sky

seems stable. They appear to do no harm. The question
can’t be: Who will know when she’s gone? It’s frogs

and fishes. It’s atumble, askew, atip in the midden. I’ve
learned not to find truth in a world. I’m trying to go on.



A Wind Is Like So Many Arrows A House Like So Many Some Kind Of Doors


It’s more complicated than that. Metaphor
or not it’s this one body breaking up sends
the mind’s bear scrambling in the pit. Self
is a rugged low-down thing, time’s loaded.
Poor mind. Poor bear. Poorest hour of end:
the winds are up, foreclosures. Every place
you look eyesore and bellyflop, the single
imperfect discourse of an unfinished world.



 


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