The Ashtray

Flicked off the end to the bottom...

[anashtray]

tu oublieras aussi Henriette - songs for an unwilling parting

i. don't save me - HAIM | ii. different colored eyes - Charlene Kaye | iii. can't live without your love - Janelle Monae | iv. life round here - Ellie Goulding ft. Angel Haze | v. out of my league - Fitz & the Tantrums | vi. haunted - Beyonce | vii. ohmygod! - Kate Nash | viii. addicted to love - florence and the machine | ix. thinkin bout you - Frank Ocean | x. don't forget me - Neko Case

x

[anashtray]

In the beginning, I loved you In the same way I love The sea The rose window at Notre Dame Short lines at the airport Sunshine during rainshowers You were a force of nature in my globe I wish I could say that I loved you Like a favorite book The pages so worn by my fingers That they crumble, the spine bent inside out from My ceaseless pleasure But rather, my feelings for you Are so obscure yet To me, I can say Without doubt That there is no sensation in the world quite like how I feel about you Except maybe that feeling when You take a sip of hot chocolate Too soon And it burns all the way down your throat.

(via anashtray)

[anashtray]

In the beginning, I loved you In the same way I love The sea The rose window at Notre Dame Short lines at the airport Sunshine during rainshowers You were a force of nature in my globe I wish I could say that I loved you Like a favorite book The pages so worn by my fingers That they crumble, the spine bent inside out from My ceaseless pleasure But rather, my feelings for you Are so obscure yet To me, I can say Without doubt That there is no sensation in the world quite like how I feel about you Except maybe that feeling when You take a sip of hot chocolate Too soon And it burns all the way down your throat.

[anashtray]

there are things that I think that make me want to strip away the parts of me that can love

thoughts too shameful to be filled with air they hide under my covers like a sick child. and I take these things in my arms

and strangle them dead.

[anashtray]

there are things that I think that make me want to strip away the parts of me that can love

thoughts too shameful to be filled with air they hide under my covers like a sick child. and I take these things in my arms

and strangle them dead.

[anashtray]

1am taking the last train home And I've got so far still left in the cold Beer and weed and her breath on my lips I think I feel a bad high coming on. You're so far away But I can't say we've changed. No more than usual, I guess. And if you like their kisses better than mine, I can't fault you that.

[wytchbytch-blog]

the seven muses of the 11 o'clock news

i. igphenia

i eat only the choicest meats i drink only the finest wines they stain my lips and breasts blood red i sleep on beds of down i wear cloths of silk and gold i am someone

and i am dead.

ii. eurydice

he sang to me with such a soft voice all the songs of my childhood i mistook him for a bird, a brook, something sweet and pure i was wrong. he was a blade i was the fire he is a tragedy

and i am dead.

iii. clytemnestra

you’d have thought the horse wasn’t necessary a thousand ships should be good for something. they were good for a thousand wives jumping from the city walls. i am power. i am crowned. i am queen within my own right. achilles gets a song i will have a throne of bones. he is triumphant

and i am dead.

iv. megara

i always thought i had strength to match his not in the sinews of my arms but in the fire of my mind- turns out smart girls aren’t good for much. he is a hero

and i am dead.

v. dido

i built my kingdom from a smile and an oxhide i’ve always held the aces. a faithful wife, ha. though i suppose it’s true hatred is the strongest faith a girl can have. he is a king

and i am dead.

vi. daphne

prayer is my blade i was always too pure to live. after all what’s the fun in being a frigid bitch? he is a god

and i am dead.

vii. helen

i was not born. i hatched. i’ve been clawing my way out since day one. i thought i was special. turns out no power is absolute in the face of men and they strung me up just the same to watch my pretty legs dance. i am a goddess

and i am dead.

[oofpoetry]

The Poet Describes an Orgasm

My body fills                 and fills                  like a tumbler  of lemonade           poured by God.               I am  a hundred light            bulbs burning             out.  I am your           favorite dessert.            I am opening  and opening          and I feel as though          I cannot  open anymore or           my legs          would surely grow  flowers                  from the back of my           knees.  I am overflowing          the bathtub.           I am spilling spilling                              spilling                   clean.

  Sierra DeMulder

[anashtray]

My sister's advice

My little sister

                told me to go get ice cream,

                to walk out of the dead

                apartment with nothing but

                a cat, a canceled cable subscription,

                and a book by Oliver Sacks.

  She told me

                to walk off the pain

                because it’s only in my muscles

                and the heart is a muscle and

                if you feed and care for the body,

                so do you the heart.

  What I didn’t

                say to her was,

                “The pain

                is in the brain.”

[anashtray]

The things I think when you're too busy for me

that you don't love me

that you must be tired

that I'm funny-smelling, maybe funny-looking

that perhaps we're both in need of a self-care day

that you have a lot of work, much more than I

that I've always been better at time management than you

that you don't love me

that maybe this is a sign that the secret agents have come for you and you are indisposed, held in a secret interrogation room deep under the city

that you have your period

that you stayed up too late last night, and as you stared at a computer screen you looked into the void, and you were afraid

that you don't love me

that you have better things to do

that you're tired of my laugh, my speech patterns, my snore

that you've found someone better to kiss, or at least imagine kissing

that you don't love me

that you hate yourself almost as much as I hate myself

that you hate yourself more than I hate you

that you'd rather touch yourself through the whiskeydick than share a drink with me

that the universe is conspiring to keep us apart in every sense

that it is a stupid and terrible thing, to fall in love

that you don't love me

that you don't love me

[faredisfare-blog]

St. Kevin and the Blackbird, Seamus Heaney

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird. The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow, Imagine being Kevin. Which is he? Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms? Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees? Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head? Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river, ‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

[highlighteretcigarettes]

there’s a reason i don’t do this sort of thing very often

(I am very bad at it)

[anashtray]

Hall of Mirrors

I did consider texting you last night

(or I guess it was this morning)

when I woke up from a nightmare

to an empty bed.

  I saw the time and thought maybe you, too,

a fellow transgressor of dreams,

might be awake

--freckled lavender folds under your eyes

  staring at a screen.

I was looking for meaning, too,

when I fell awake and (fearing forever) hoped

to forget in your arms that I will also die.

  A bad dream is a species removed from a nightmare,

no more alike are the two than

a fire ant and a firefly.

  I consider, as I wash the dirty

sock taste of my retainer out in the morning,

that you are mortal, too.

[s-tick]

Allison Walker-Elders

Allison’s poem will appear in the third issue of S/tick (theme: Torn). Look for it in September! And visit Allison’s website.

back when my bones were a goddess

we slept between the roots of trees in one of the few warm months the North offers. Our skin, covered by polyester and cotton; our eyes, eyelids, stars and sky. We slept through the night because we were young, the night terrors that plagued our mother

never visit us. She lay apart. My body curled around yours, and our blood flowed in concert. Our lungs breathed a conversation. And our mother, custodian, guarded our temple, guided by the moon and tree and still water. These things were ours forever, back when my bones were a goddess. We were young and safe and protected, and now we are oh so mortal

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[anashtray]

S/tick is publishing a poem of mine! Check out their fall and spring issues for some exquisite art, prose, and poetry.

[nevver]

Wolfgang Bloch

[littlestraightallythings]

[truthinadvertising]

[text reads: You’re pansexual? But you totally look full-on lesbian!” <3]

Did you mean everyday of my life? I HATE beyond HATE when people call me a lesbian. First of all, I’m not. Second of all Lesbian is the only fucking LGBTQ* term that implies gender. Anyone can be gay, bi, pan, trans, or queer but you kind of have to be a woman to be a lesbian and I’m not a freaking woman. I can’t really get mad about that since I haven’t been upfront with most people about it but it bothers me. Especially if I have made it clear I don’t identify as a lesbian BEFORE. I hate everyone.

[highlighteretcigarettes]

There is something in the quality of sound made by birdsong bouncing off trees and leaves and blades of grass all slick with rain

that returns me to eleven, rising with a sun, in theory, cup of chocolate clenched in cold fists and my bare feet on damp wood, painted green.

The sounds of morning echo around my greenhouse head and my thoughts rocket from plate to stone. They ripple the surface of the pool where ornamental goldfish have begun to live again.