Renée Ashley

ashley

from Basic Heart

Contents

  Biography
  The Map Is of      Another World
  Invitation
  The Things We      Said Are Much      Maligned
  What the Dark Was   Heart as Metaphor
  Self-Portrait on a      White Table
  She Refuses to      Believe in      Dreams
  Lines for the      Disengaged      Heart
  What Will Not Help      You
  The Roof Is Askew,      The Sky Falls In
  Death Is a Hat
  Capsule
  Desire Is Naked
  White (I)
  White (II)
  How Little We Can       Only Be
  A Poem about Not      Quite Getting It      (But Not an      Aphasic Poem      in the Least)
  A Nice Poem in
     Praise of Sex
     To Make Up for      the One That      Wasn't So Nice
  Heart Beneath a      Door
  Charity
  Poem about the      Cages With a      Sentence from      Wallace Stevens
  I Am Still Here

 

A Web Chapbook from
The Literary Review


Renée Ashley

from Basic Heart



HOW LITTLE WE CAN ONLY BE

suddenly sense and
the animal we are: how could I
not understand: a kind of
clarity the kind between words the
kind you can never explain it's in the
body: body: knowing period full
stop nature carbon how
little we can only be how
small how downright compost
refrain: got it how
oh poor little spirit
little we can only be stop





First published in Notre Dame Review