Forthcoming in Vestiges_02: Ennui
American (post), Untitled
Routine
Pick purple dead heads. Throw them to the ground.
The Babies Sleep Tight
Leftover Wings
From the basket, the babies point to pretty boxes containing imitation
real things and artificial
ones of a kind. I talon a raw snake.
Not knowing
to check whether the eyes were round.
With eel sauce,
sushi. With a sling-blade in three parts. Without precedent
the eccentric moose. Original the sea bass. Creole
the rice. I-kernels flock to a bottle tree. Sad eyes flecked
with pecan gold. A green truck haunts
a swollen face. I spit shells in the direction of hearth, make lefts
under bridges, and bottle up while the river babies us.
Peculiar Talons
Over the Carcass of a Deer
black bruise-bite wide as her dog’s black head. smoke fades down the hollow.
You Are Here, a Map
In this Atmosphere
Difficult to locate, my heart bleeds
while they feed at my breasts. Slice
my tongue twice with a sword. Horses
are hungry, the serpent and moon waning,
volcanic sun socks a line to bread and iron.
Water virgin and a cow with one arm feel
a heart that does not fell. I have faith to be
blind, a selfish fish. Hubris leaps over yellow
akin to the monkey hands. Sprouts sores
with tree wire. Barbed blue eyes, not fleur de lis,
but doves. Hip point to hip point, we choose
memories in pink tutus, chickens who lay brown eggs.
The strange face of sexuality carves elegant pieces
of speech, a cupcake skirt.
—
Ashley David is an interdisciplinary artist. Her creative work has appeared in Web Conjunctions, Hyperallergic, The Offending Adam, Alimentum, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, The Greensboro Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Verse, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere.