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


A NICE POEM IN PRAISE OF SEX
TO MAKE UP FOR THE ONE THAT WASN'T SO NICE

this is when the brainpan tips
and the wrack and weep
of the body begins here
is where the bones go slide and
knock, the fire catching
at each stem and burning white
and here is the bite and
the bump of it, the long
and the smooth of it: such a fine
thigh against your own
and the whole earth
feeling like rain




First published in Antioch Review