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A Poem of Two Minds

RENÉE ASHLEY

                             What heart doesn't break?

First, the exploration of an undefined field
then another dark beer and the riff of thin notes

from the boy with the horn who plays outside
the pool hall.
                       The moonlight spins in the trees
and time is a plural and cavernous thing.
                                                                           It is
as simple as this: the blue chamber of your heart

rapping against your white frame.
                                                           There is no mercy
like this one: you are always beginning. The body
has a vision of its own, has its one blue eye. And

you are the burning house. And you are aware
of how you have not travelled, have not met

in bright light what is not quite the heart
-- and you find that yours is a fragile discontent.

Here is the dream of obligation: we rush into
the alarming world on the body's terms and, every-

thing, after a while, is a faint obsession. We know
what is there. Think... what can you possibly love?




Interpreting for the Madman

RENÉE ASHLEY

  The madmen line up in their ink-blue hats. The head
madman takes his place in the exact center of the line
  -- from there, he is certain, not one of his charges
is too far away. He has, he says, long arms. He passes
  two nectarines, one each way, indicating that the passing
should continue. When the nectarine reaches the madman
  on the far left, that madman says, "I always knew the poet
kept his heart!" On the right, that last madman is humming,
  in tenor iambics, an endless tune, and he is waiting
for further instructions -- what to do with a silent nectarine?
  The head madman is giving no hints; he is looking both ways.
Madmen are beginning to mumble, "fruitfruitfruit" and so
  forth. They are shuffling their many feet. One fly, one
for every two madmen, zips noisily about their heads,
  strafes their ears, bumps against their oily noses.
Not one madman dares to take a swing at the fly, though
  every madman is thinking of it. The fly is thinking, not
"fruitfruitfruit," but "buzzbuzz buzzbuzz" because that
  is what flies think. The poem. Thepoem thepoem thepoem.




I Have Been Told You Would Like More Story

RENÉE ASHLEY

           I

Astonishment and bones: the jaw
rocking, the hide of it, the seek.

And the naming, a sideways thing
best done with the eyes shaded.

The tongue is a terrible teacher,
the story is sand. What you see

when you look back. One mind
in the midst of falling. A handful

           II

of heart. I have been told you would
like more story. I could tell you one.

Tell you two. Could flatten my tongue
with sand, beat it like a rug, could flog

the tale out. There is no tale. There
is only the beating. And a shadow

-- a dust cloud, say -- the size of a life.
There is that. And in her coin purse,

           III

it is the story the story
    about the child and the tall

grass the golden grass and
   the wind like a cradle the water

the river coursing past
   the child the wind like a wave

making its way past the child
   and how in one sweep the dark

           IV

falls like a black pane how
   daylight drops still burning

beneath the dry mountain out
   of the reach of the sky beyond

the reach of the child -- no,
   it is not the child we dream

of -- and the night hangs ready
    to break the way all that we

           V

cannot know hangs like a sky
    above the wind above the burning

absent day yes how we wait
   a child's waiting a patience

of fast water falling -- it is
   the water we dream the story

a snapshot, an image, and a word here
and there to pay the bridgemaster. OK,

           VI

try this: here comes the spirit toting its
bones. Behind that, shadows bearing

news of a history of shadows. And no one
is keeping a record of hell. She tells you

wash is hanging on the line; at least three
dogs are swept away; the stone chimney's

tumbling. A sash cord breaks and
the window bangs down. Here it all

           VII

comes, action, reaction, such a story goes
like this: pond like a lake like a river like

a sea. She has lifted a shell from that sand,
hoisted the world to her ear. Again it rushes

into the bone. Again the astonished heart
turns back to its own dark blossom. There

was only one real bout of travel. She still
lives there. She writes this. That's the story.




Renée Ashley's books include Salt, The Various Reasons of Light, and The Revisionist's Dream. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the NEA, fellowships from the NJSCA, a Pushcart Prize, and the Charles Angoff Award from TLR. She is the Assistant Poetry Coordinator of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation..


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