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


THE THINGS WE SAY ARE MUCH MALIGNED

There is terror in the woods. Black wings
take root between the trees. And all

the black tongues slapping. No, the heart
is not true. The dark is not. (And what you see

cannot be what you know at all.) Count
your failures or the stars in the untrue

sky. Count heartbeats. Or the dead.
Count your hopes and your falsehoods.

Persuasion is a number. Rest your truth
here: I have ten fingers to tell you why.



First published in Notre Dame Review