Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 12
June 17, 2017
intothe-labyrinth:
She pins you to hotel doors—not a goddess...
She pins you to hotel doors—
not a goddess anymore,
but she still looks like religion in high heels.
She kisses you godless. Whispers,
We dress like princesses to go out and kill kings
Ashe Vernon, from “Old World Gods,” Wrong Side of a Fistfight
Moodboard for my angelic twin @lookingglasssoul
Why aren't Wrong side of a fistfight and your other books available on your etsy?
I don’t have them in stock right now. I’m in a pretty bad place, financially, and it costs anywhere between $3 and $8 per book to order more. Right now I have Boatman copies left over from tour, but everything else I had on hand sold out. Sorry :(
I’ll restock eventually, but given my current financial situation, I can’t say when that’s going to be.
June 16, 2017
latenightcornerstore:
Signed books, handwritten poems, and...
Signed books, handwritten poems, and poetry commissions all 25% off for a limited time! And every order comes with a “I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE RIVER STYX” sticker and a unique, summery haiku!
June 15, 2017
oneupdateatatime:I remember finding poetry so utterly...
I remember finding poetry so utterly ridiculously boring and unengaging back in high school and I feel like that’s a pretty common attitude to have. But having learned about spoken word poetry I’ve really gotten into it and can see how this is an art form that is so fucking powerful and energetic and engaging in ways that high school failed to demonstrate. Fuck the dusty old pages with forced rhymes - give me someone spilling out their emotions about grief and death on a stage or public space any day.
June 13, 2017
Signed books, handwritten poems, and poetry commissions all 25%...
Signed books, handwritten poems, and poetry commissions all 25% off for a limited time! And every order comes with a “I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE RIVER STYX” sticker and a unique, summery haiku!
June 11, 2017
"A CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER’S GHOST
Where is all the woman
..."
Where is all the woman
you were born with?
Everywhere.
I’ve been setting it down
in pieces my entire life.
This is the body your mother and I
made for you. Why
isn’t it good enough?
It is good, but it’s not finished yet.
Do you wish you’d been born a boy?
I wish I’d been born an ocean.
Alive and boundless,
with a name too wild
to fit in man’s mouth.”
- A CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER’S GHOST by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"Picture: an unmarked grave.
A buried sweetness.
The sugared-honey, blackberry syrup of me
now six..."
A buried sweetness.
The sugared-honey, blackberry syrup of me
now six feet under with all my reckless loving.
Please.
I just wanna be soft again.
I’ve got a strong jaw. I can take a few punches,
but I’m sick of all the swinging—
You know, I didn’t used to be like this.
But I was just a stupid kid, looking to stop the hurting:
thirteen when I coughed up a powderpuff instead of a lung
and mistook the thing for weakness. Spent the next six years
swallowing splinters and spitting up grenadine.
Came out the backside of nineteen looking like
a gunfight and a fistful of teeth. Hit twenty
like a body on the wrong side of starving:
heart too hungry to eat.
I stowed away softness under my bed, so I could pretend
I had a suspension bridge instead of a skeleton. Now listen,
I can backtrack through the trenches,
play hopscotch or pick-up-sticks with
landmines and drunken dreams, but
I can’t dig up the kid who thought
love would always be a two-way street.
What if—
what if I can’t distill the honey from the whiskey
‘cause there ain’t no honey left in me?”
-
HUCKLEBERRY HONEY, by Ashe Vernon
(from the book Wrong Side of a Fistfight)
June 10, 2017
"Whatever I was expecting, it isn’t this:
all that shy and quiet tucked into hunched shoulders
and..."
all that shy and quiet tucked into hunched shoulders
and bashful non-eye contact, swapping secrets
over hot tea with milk and lots of honey.
You know,
If you’d have asked me
a year ago, two years ago,
two weeks ago,
I’d have said love was
all teeth.
Except—here he is,
sitting across the table tapping his foot
against my knee, talking about stars or
storms or waking up in the middle of a good dream.
All soft hands. All quiet, heated wanting.
All coffee cups and candlelight
and none of the ugly.
Turns out,
love can’t hold his liquor,
can’t hold himself together,
pours over the table after two beers
and weeps. Just a sad, sweet little thing,
looking for the lessons in the heartbreaks.
Nothing like me—trying to hammer trauma
into something sharper, locking doors
instead of opening them. Me,
with his number tucked into my pocket,
knowing full well
I’ll never call him.”
-
FIRST DATE WITH LOVE by Ashe Vernon
(from the book Wrong Side of a Fistfight,
a rewrite of the poem On Loving Love)
June 9, 2017
"I grew up in god’s back pocket.
To me, he was less Almighty and more
like the grown up friend who..."
To me, he was less Almighty and more
like the grown up friend who didn’t know
how to talk to children. Our conversations were always—
stilted.
Barely ten, I watched the church chisel my father
into a pillar of brimstone. Or salt.
Watched him swallow scripture and
spit up salvation.
Standing on the sidelines, or the pews,
I saw sickness butcher him into buckle
and cracked leather. Each diagnosis
pulled the east Texas outta him somethin’ fierce.
He got worse: pill bottles and albuterol
piled up like unanswered prayers
on the kitchen counter, returned to sender,
until I ask my mother if maybe god just—
moved away.”
-
excerpt from PREACHER’S KID, by Ashe Vernon
(from the book Wrong Side of a Fistfight)
