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


asha

Skin Trade

Mother,

There is always a market for flesh
even now
sunlight in thorns
they are hungry for us
make ordinary what is not
dying
the innocent know this

they reach back
future to memory
faces repeating themselves
a lime-green inch worm
toiling over jumbled foot stones

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

Pele

Somewhere nearby a fly is the last
friendly 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
from the boiling point
of hurricanes. We—
walk back together
over burnished glass,
Anna Sadhorse
from the fire-eating sea
and me, back past
tiny ferns busy in their
grottoes digesting
the volcano
within the thin
moist shadows
caught in the upheaval’s
crust.

It has never been so fine,
here—where the foot
does the thinking
finds momentary
balance 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

Animal Life

For every prayer
there is an equal
and opposite prayer.

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


asha

Then and Now

The picture is from a photo album
my mother request on her death bed.
She is the girl sitting on the dock.
This poem is for her.

Shall I bend or break...

That is the question.
I am like a word
that has been overused.
Daughter.
Sister.
Cousin.
Friend.
Student.
Girlfriend.
Boyfriend.
Member.
Stranger.
Mother.
Father.
Aunt.
Uncle.
Teacher.
Expert.
Ruler.
Grandmother.
Grandfather.
Confidant.
Castaway.
Enemy.
What do I purchase
in exchange for my integrity
and my freedom?

                                                               
 asha

Horary for Winter Solstice

Near the South Galactic Pole
between Cetus and Sculptor
beyond the universe of naked eye
the Silver Coin Galaxy
shimmers—

to its west
near the galactic equator and ecliptic intersection              
the diffuse nebulae M20 and M8
stellar sphinxes,
guardians at the solstice point of our sun
shimmer—

on my earth    
wild roses perfume this afternoon’s rain—

on my earth
in the 21st century after Christ
after countless way-showers and seed-sowers                       
the only revolution left
is love.


asha