anna sadhorse

Reconstruction

2011-12-05T09:15:00.000-08:00

Reconstruction

One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. I've written it before on countless scraps of paper. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. It is composed of a seemingly endless succession of beginnings. The original order of the words has been lost. I rely on you to supply the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost but I promise to stay true to its drift. That is not a matter of memory. It is a matter of being. One world at, one word at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does not exist. One word, one sentence at a time, this is its drift. This is the drift. The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes were never collected. Jotted. Scribbled. On scraps, in notebooks, on flaps. They have never been collected. They have seldom been re-read. Or read. The words, disjointed, have been set down and abandon. No, not abandon. There is much thinking between them, the phrases, the paragraph and elimination of words. And ideas. "Why?" I am telling a story. Build the house. Paint it later. And later still introduce the particulars. Each letter reverberates but ... I digress.

asha

Dead Reckoning

2011-07-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Dead Reckoning

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
A bird sings because it has a song. -Anonymous

WINTER
for Joe & Jim

In the evening we
carry down our dead
they leave our hands willingly
above Dog Star watches
cold, white
as on ancient evenings,
Dog Star
bringer of rain.

SPRING

Listen to the grass
leaning soft green
through the fence
singing.

Listen to the green
crawling slowly
away from the yard
where the bones lie
under their feet,
under the dandelion's,
the yellow dandelion's, feet
listening.

SUMMER

Sometimes we take
our measure from the dead
as from a stone that sits
unchanged amid the changing seasons
like a departed shore the dead mark
how far we’ve come through mystery
and how far we’ve yet to go.

FALL
"Solve et coagula"

The small things go first
over the blue salt edge of the world
followed by a deconstruction
of their tracks
by the wind
that covers and uncovers
the same finger bone
my own
where it fell in confusion
trembling
at the slow moving wheel
of the desert's rim.

asha

Mélancolie Mécanique

2011-06-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Mélancolie Mécanique

Dear Mother,

I was in the world
a succession of strangers.
How was I to know?
The dog goes on her lonely
way. I forgot about you for
years. Morning has me

in her claw; disheveled, vacant.
Before sunrise the hardbounce
re-tooling of the clockwork day
is done and the great wheel set
between the glittering city
and the far-flung sea.

I called last night. They told me
you were still dead and too busy
but I know you were there, silent
as the white owl come to the terminal
edge. Now it is up to chance and the
rain. Y nosotros, tus perdidos.

II

The wind is idling down the road.
It passes with a backward glance.
It is an old conversation, one I can
neither remember nor forget. No
word means the same thing twice.
I miss you. That I remember in the

mother tongue. They will deny
everything. Potatobug begins her
trek across the day. I stop to let her
pass. Ant rushes by. Dandelion opens
to the sun. In this inherited dawn,
first light slanted just so catches

movement, something struggling in
the indifferent gears, washed in by
the collapsing wave, cornflower sea
glass eyes etched with irreconcilable
horizons. Beast or demon? But I am
getting ahead of the story.

asha

La Tormenta

2011-05-15T17:19:00.001-07:00

La Tormenta

This is how the world was
lightning on the rim and a small boat
moving away forever
lantern swinging over a veiled sea.

We had the world to ourselves.
I was the boat, you were the shore.
You were the lighting, I was the swinging.
We were the horizon.

You were the sea. You were forever.
I was small. I was moving away.
You were how. I was the veils.
We were the storm.

asha

2011-05-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

Holding Pattern
Rainy season

I.
Thunder breaking low over the afternoon pressing

     Tell your secrets to them

a pandemonium of parrots into the trees. It takes a
days worth of rain to relieve the tension in the air
thunder and the curtains lifting.

II.
I am listening to the muttering dark and how much
older the cricket sounds singing at the bottom of the
wall tonight. Rain slides down around the pebbles in my
grizzle root hair that fixes me in the dirt, fixes me
to the underworld and all the voices there.

III.
There are games you lose to yourself. You stay anchored
to the room through one barely open eye, anchored to

     Who you talkin’ to?

the world by a slimy silver line, still as a boat marooned in

     Who you talkin’ to?

a cave, lightening cracking outside, over the night, over
the vast awakening water. You feel the pull of echoes
kaleidoscoping too fast to grab, each mutation a little more
threatening.

     Hold. Hold. Hold.

The sound of approaching footsteps pass and finally fade.
A hand reaches in and touches the mirror.

asha

Costa Rica, 2009

2011-03-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

#21

A red fish
the size of a young child
startles up through the trees.
Who, sitting around
the little concrete tables,
will remember it for me?

asha

2011-02-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Border Crossing

Leaving my language behind, I entered the labyrinth. Its streets were narrow, old and crowded with small fruit-colored buildings made of mud and stone. Dogs spoke in tongues and birds, following an alien gyroscope, flew downward into a cloudy underworld. Saints loitered in shadows making deals with passers-by. I was greeted by a cockroach who kindly explained their price, plastic flowers and bottled flame. I could see within the wicker shadows of their tiny huts, each saint stood stoic and faithful before their candles and the litter of past offerings; blackened, shattered glass and dusty clods of petals and wax. But at the hour any nearby church bell rang, they winced in their solitude. I asked the cockroach if anyone else was in the business.The dogs, she answered, adding that I best consider carefully before choosing among them. Before I could ask anything else she scuttled off, disappearing into the crack of a flame red wall.

asha

Jazz

2010-11-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

Jazz
-excerpt from NaNo manuscript

I am sitting at Comma Coffee. It is nearly night. Little Cat has finished her nap and taken to strolling around the room again. The same band is still playing the same frenetic tune, pounding horns and staccato drummer smashing around his set, beating everyone over the head, stabbing the audience in the back with his rhythm. The piano player is running down the hill as fast as his long fingers will take him. Bam diddle bam... running up and down the keyboard looking for a way off. Bam bam bam everyone looks around wild eyed. Ha! Smash. Bam. His fingers catch fire and run up and down the keys screaming. More. Bam! His hands are burning. Bam zap run runninggggggggggg around. Bam!

Little Cat has stopped by to check out my feet. The piano player's hands lunge up the stairs, fly around the ceiling looking for a way out. Bambam. BAM! Waves roll through the room sweeping the furniture and people away. The only ones left are me and Little Cat who is smelling my shoe.

Night is settling down outside on the street. The horn is circling around the room like a mad hornet but night is falling like ashes over the city and with it a promise of peace at last, sometime. Peace. The horn is now on fire. It goes bam. Goes BAM!

I have a long way to go to get to the end of this day. I think about the hours ahead and sleep waiting like welcoming death somewhere in the middle of the night. The music has melted into debris awash in a black wave. I look over the creaking pier into the water moving up and down the pilings. There are faces in the waves, familiar faces but I cannot recall their names. Perhaps they never had names. Some faces never had names. The tune has finally ended to cheers and a long round of applause. The audience receives its thanks. I look back into the dark water, faces swirling in the currents. I hear the harbor horns, light house, buoys clanging in the distance.

asha

2010-11-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

Chances

Answers are easier to come by than chances but after, one by one, they close and drop carpeting the ground with faded color and you’ve pushed the blade in and your dream falls to its knees, you have to finish what you started and you wonder how it ever came to this but you lean forward anyway until all the pain is gone then you look up to the mountains because they have been there all along and you look to the sea’s returning wave and understand that between these two and the blue blue sky above it is still possible that you have a chance.

asha

2010-03-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Jazz
excerpt from Book of Images

I am sitting at Comma Coffee. It is nearly night. Little Cat has finished her nap and taken to strolling around the room again. The same band is still playing the same frenetic tune, pounding horns and staccato drummer smashing around his set, beating everyone over the head, stabbing the audience in the back with his rhythm. The piano player is running down the hill as fast as his long fingers will take him. Bam diddle bam... running up and down the keyboard looking for a way off. Bam bam bam everyone looks around wild eyed. Ha! Smash. Bam. His fingers catch fire and run up and down the keys screaming. More. Bam! His hands are burning. Bam zap run runninggggggggggg around. Bam!

Little Cat has stopped by to check out my feet. The piano player's hands lunge up the stairs, fly around the ceiling looking for a way out. Bambam. BAM! Waves roll through the room sweeping the furniture and people away. The only ones left are me and Little Cat who is smelling my shoe.

Night is settling down outside on the street. The horn is circling around the room like a mad hornet but night is falling like ashes over the city and with it a promise of peace at last, sometime. Peace. The horn is now on fire. It goes bam. Goes BAM!

I have a long way to go to get to the end of this day. I think about the hours ahead and sleep waiting like welcoming death somewhere in the middle of the night. The music has melted into debris awash in a black wave. I look over the creaking pier into the water moving up and down the pilings. There are faces in the waves, familiar faces but I cannot recall their names. Perhaps they never had names. Some faces never had names. The tune has finally ended to cheers and a long round of applause. The audience receives its thanks. I look back into the dark water, faces swirling in the currents. I hear the harbor horns, light house, buoys clanging in the distance.

Jazz

2010-03-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

asha

Reminiscence

2010-01-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

Reminiscence

I am sure it was your face looking down, looking
back at me - your fingers holding on. I knew you’d
come, waited a long time there beneath the surface,
Moon looking in on me now and then. Hello Moon.
The only way I remember you is sadly.

I hesitated as though it would be too easy to touch the
close enough to touch forms, then there was no time left,
just a dream almost breaking through, almost resurfacing
for one last breath, the world somewhere just beyond the
watery sky.

asha

2009-11-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

The Road

Standing by the road that goes everywhere standing lying by that road eye level to it wondering standing by the road that so conveniently comes even to me the road that turns around and disappears into itself standing by that famous road one day wondering where it goes eating blackberries mouthfuls of alive at the root berries munching roadside brimming with flowing wild black bramble wild with sweet juices on my lips watching the wild road that followed me followed me home and waited outside my father's door my guest waited outside through the wet northern night patiently. There is always the road.

Nights I looked out the window at the road standing under the street lamp in its circle of light that mysterious patient sly snake in the grass who slithered all the way down to my father's house among the thick old trees who knew secrets down to my father's house with its comforting hearth fire the road followed me there even to my father's house and waited disguised as a road waited and in the day my mother went out on it to shop and my father used it to go to his work but never once did they suspect the disguise and cunning of that thing that waited for me.

At night the road left itself and crept to my bedroom window whispering. If my father had known that this inscrutable cunning snake in the grass came to me at night slithered through the empty glass down the wall and slyly into my ears into my brain into my dreams he certainly would not have allowed me to sleep on that side of the house he would have forbidden it he would have insisted I sleep in the attic room that looks into the forest but my father never suspected these nightly visitations of the road he was hopelessly under its spell believing it to be the mere thing it seemed to be going to all the known places in life he was unaware never suspected it waited each night in its circle of light like a tricky cat with claims to make.

And so the road that goes to every unknown place began to crawl and sprawl through my brain like a river with endless tributaries stretching over the land here lakes formed fish spawned mountains grew forests peopled the mountains stars sprung up into the dream night and the road climbed up into the stars like an eerie beanstalk climbed up into the stars winding around constellations tipping tilting and sagging them twisting and stretching them until the whole night sky swayed and rocked as though it might crash down all this went on in the quiet of the night in the unsuspecting night of my father's house.

And so this road took me one day one ordinary afternoon in spite of the family dog sleeping in the yard in spite of the goldfish hovering over her pile of blue stones the road came to my father's door saying "Come on now. It’s time." One sunny polite afternoon the road sprawled recklessly to my father's door saying "Hurry up please. It’s time." The lawless road drummed its fingers on the uncarved pumpkin saying "It's time. It's time. No time to say goodbye." And no one watched us go but the tail twitching twin cats who never told anyone anything at all. One polite autumn afternoon the road abruptly cut me out of my life and I left with the road that dried up as we went leaving a red stain of a trail behind us and so we went always going where the road goes into itself ever more into itself on and on towards itself leaving nothing behind but that ruddy thin stain that marked the earth behind us like a scar.

asha

(Honorable Mention, West Wind Review, 1989)

2009-11-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

Desert Crossing

This dark blood that binds us
cheats us of our truth, brother
only a desert's dead center
can compare

but this creeping emptiness
like a desert devouring itself
oasis after oasis
has a true ring, does it not
a solidness, a comfort
we survivors can depend on

come on, need me brother
without a truth
no heartbreak is enough

I seem sure like one going
to meet a lover
but behind my eyes
sighing, shifting ashes.

asha

2009-11-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

Counterpoint

There is a sadness
standing before light
clouds know it
stepping out into the air

and great storms
born of upper, unseen winds
know it
banished to the edge of light

and for all its wonder
Perfection
stone like
is still
an uncored flute
inert
through which the disturbing
winds of heaven
cannot blow.

There is a gap
nothing can fill
born of what can never be.

There is a yearning
stepping out into mystery
lovers know it
calling one to the other
the Unknowable answers back
breaking their hearts
with unthinkable melodies.

asha
(published in the Actor's Theatre playbill for Amadeus, Ashland Oregon)

2009-06-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

Writing Instructions
For John

How do you do, he whispers in her mind.
Take it a little further, he chides,
beyond this dry afternoon, the layers of cliff light,
his gray root eyes stern in his pitch thick bush of hair.

Amid the squeaks, twitters and rattles,
the plunking sound of jumping fish,
the mumbled chatter of lunchers down the lake
and the buzz of diving flies,
a fish strikes, bites the meat.

"When I was a girl I fished,
watched them just below the surface, strike."

For a moment only the wind,
winding its way through the tops of the trees,
makes a sound.

Shake out a beginning, middle and end, he whispers.

"There was a girl; she grew into an old woman.
Her life ended there."

The boy catches his first fish,
grabs the struggling creature into his world,
his too bright light.
Its tiny teeth sink into his hand;
catch his surprise in the inverted wilderness of water.

Fishing the lake means trying it from all sides,
the man says smiling around his teeth.

asha

(published in ByLine Magazine)

2009-06-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Skin Trade

Mother,
there is always a market for flesh
even now
sunlight lost in thorns
they are hungry for us
make ordinary what is not
dying
the beautiful know this.

they reach back
future to memory
faces repeating themselves
a lime-green inch worm
toiling over jumbled footstones
in the membrane
the breathing cage
there is no short cut to the old cities
in the necessary air

I am sitting in a chair
imagine me
I move my right hand
move yours from the dirt
touch me
it is easy
this regeneration
a habit natural as spring
we the living have come to
expect it
you know it is a gift
the last thing
the dying pup saw from the heap
after they skinned everything
but her eyelashes.

asha

(published in Skidrow Penthouse, Spring 2009)

2009-06-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Pele

Somewhere nearby the fly
is a friendly last voice
of earth where with broken
pieces glinting everywhere and
unbraided fire hair
the literal eye shuts lured
beyond by what cannot
be seen what has not
begun
stretches out what cannot
be imagined
takes shape under my feet
the bloody red sulfuric sweaty birth
of future worlds.

I never wanted to return she says
never wanted to leave the white plume
the stinging rain
but we come back together
from the boiling point of hurricanes we
walk back over burnished glass
Anna Sadhorse from the fire eating sea
and I back past tiny ferns busy in their grottos
digesting the volcano within
thin moist shadows
caught in the upheaval’s crust

It has never been so fine here where the foot
does the thinking finding momentary ground
before the body falls again forward
into unforeseeable circumstance.

Pick any thread from the loom of chaos
she whispers.
The wildest will do. It is our job
making sense of nothing.

asha

Published in Skidrow Penthouse, Spring 2009

2009-04-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Animal Life

For every prayer
there is an
equal and opposite
prayer.

She was sleeping
off the night
and too starved
to flinch when
they tossed her
in the trash
where she died
three days later
pupless and
full of milk.

asha

2009-02-15T19:42:00.000-08:00

Contact Language
- letter 611, excerpt from The Book of Images

I am writing this in the dark
ushering each reluctant
word to its place upon
the page the invisible theatre
fingers dipped in ink it is risky
spies and traitors everywhere slavery
and broken minds but these are
strong old friends
old as war.

asha

2009-02-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

The photo is from an album my mother had with her on her death bed. She is the girl sitting on the dock.This poem is for her.