Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 145
September 24, 2015
wordsdancemag:
latenightcornerstore:
General reminder that if you love a book (especially if it’s...
General reminder that if you love a book (especially if it’s published through an independent or small press!) don’t forget to review it!!!! People are WAY more likely to leave reviews for things they hate than things they love, because human nature is weird. So don’t forget to tell people how much you love things! Review books you love on amazon and goodreads! Help the authors that matter to you boost their sales and reputation!
All of the Words Dance books can be found on Goodreads where we would love for you to review them!
Love and Other Small Wars
What We Buried
Shaking the Trees
Belly of the Beast
Sparklefat
The No You Never Listened To
September 23, 2015
"This is what the lonely gets you:
nights spent trying to look anywhere
but at yourself, because..."
nights spent trying to look anywhere
but at yourself, because then
you’ll have to admit that it isn’t
the mirror
that’s broken.
All this crying alone in an empty apartment
won’t teach you how to say the word “love”
when you feel it, just like it won’t
help you let go of the ones
who make your skin crawl just to talk to
except you don’t want to hurt them.
(You can never bring yourself to hurt anybody.
It is your best and worst quality.
You keep on hurting yourself.)
This is what the lonely gives you:
shaky hands and a shakier heart,
second guessing every good thing
you ever got.”
- LONELY POET IN AN EMPTY HOUSE by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"My sophomore year of college,
I had to take this class called Honors Human Sexuality.
Which was a..."
My sophomore year of college,
I had to take this class called Honors Human Sexuality.
Which was a strange kind of class to wander into
because you had a dozen kids: nerdy enough to be
top of their class, getting scholarships just for
doing their homework, but
also
who were willing to have completely honest,
frank discussions about sex.
(What I’m saying is, it was awesome.)
So our first day, the professor went through this list
of intimate acts, and wanted to know what we believed
qualified as sex.
She said kissing, we said no.
She said oral, there was some controversy.
She said anal.
And one–
one singular girl, in the corner of the room,
said no.
And god, with that one word, I could tell you
her whole life’s story:
I could tell you about the Bible Belt, Southern Baptist home,
the “your virginity is a gift you give your husband.”
I could tell you about the pushy high school boyfriend, the
First True Love and how he said things like
“blue balls is a medical condition” and
“no, this is totally six inches” and
“baby, baby, anal doesn’t count as REAL sex.”
The tragedy here
is not her ignorance, or her warped perception
of human sexuality. The real tragedy
is the education system that failed her–
the way female sex drive is treated like a myth
or a side-effect of heterosexual marriage, the way
the clitorus is left un-labeled in high school text books
or how I learned the word vulva on the internet.
It’s the society whose obsession with sex
can only be rivaled by it’s shame of it.
How there is no right way to have a body:
virginity treated as prudishness,
promiscuity treated as lack of moral compass.
In a world where boys talk about
losing respect for the women they sleep with
and yet never lose respect for themselves,
it is not her fault
that she didn’t understand what she was getting into.
When she stumbled over her explanation
that she thought anal counted as sex in gay couples,
just not heterosexual ones,
it made my chest ache.
She was putting up parameters, working in clauses
all so that what she’d done
wouldn’t fall under the terrifying title of
Real Sex.
Because growing up under the
Lone Star State of Abstinence Only
turns the freedom of choice into a heavy burden
where we are taught how to say no
but not how to say yes–
where women are valued by the state of their bodies.
Did you know you can’t even pop a hymen?
That it’s a muscle and it stretches and
if you bleed the first time,
you’re not supposed to?
That stained sheets are not a rite of passage
or a sign of purity.
To every teenaged boy who’s ever bragged
about how tight she was,
here’s the part where I tell you that when she is aroused
everything lubricates and loosens,
she was only that “tight” because you
have no idea how to turn her on.
(Which is not something to brag about.)
It is unacceptable that someone
could make it to college—two decades of their life–
without getting the bare bones basics of sexuality.
And no, fear tactics and wait-until-marriage don’t count
as an education. We can’t be so caught up
in shaming sexuality that we neglect to teach
how to express it safely.
Because if Abstinence Only really works?
Then I guess anal isn’t sex.
It’s just cardio.
- HONORS HUMAN SEXUALITY by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
whereareyoupress:
latenightcornerstore:
General reminder that if you love a book (especially if...
General reminder that if you love a book (especially if it’s published through an independent or small press!) don’t forget to review it!!!! People are WAY more likely to leave reviews for things they hate than things they love, because human nature is weird. So don’t forget to tell people how much you love things! Review books you love on amazon and goodreads! Help the authors that matter to you boost their sales and reputation!
Our books are on Goodreads! If you have read any of them, please write a review:
Healing Old Wounds With New Stitches by Meggie Royer (on Amazon too)
It Looked A Lot Like Love by Kristina Haynes
Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine Von Radics (on Amazon too)
The Women Widowed to Themselves by Lora Mathis (on Amazon too)
This Is How We Find Each Other by Fortesa Latifi (on Amazon too)
Until I Learned What It Meant by Yena Sharma Purmasir (on Amazon too)
Wrong Side of a Fistfight by Ashe Vernon (on Amazon too)
You Can Do Better by Alex Dang! (on Amazon too)
"I have no idea what to call this
thing that you do to me–this
upside-down tremor of an..."
thing that you do to me–this
upside-down tremor of an almost-earthquake
at the pit of my stomach.
I don’t know what to call it,
because fear and happiness are both
equally as earth-shattering in my body
and I don’t know which category
you belong to.
Science made a mistake when it didn’t
mark your mouth as a point
on the Richter Scale.
And now, I am all tremble and chaos
holding my breath for you.
All of these thousand mile aftershocks
knocking words off my bookcase and
words off my tongue. Us,
just two girls with summer wrapped
around our throats. No–
you as the epicenter,
you as ground zero,
you as all the ways I didn’t know
I could be tied into knots–no,
tied into bows.
You
as poet and tequila and
the early hours of the morning where
we are least afraid to talk to each other.
Me, self-conscious and wanton,
deleting all the dirty pictures I want
to send to you,
deleting all the soft confessions I want
to share with you,
coveting the parts of my chest
I do not know if I am ready
to give to you, yet.
What I’m saying is,
it kills me that we keep on writing
about each other, but still
have no idea
how to talk about it.”
- A RESPONSE POEM by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
Can u post a link to the full poem of old world gods I can't seem to find it anywhere. Also do u have any other poems similar to profane? Absolutely fell in love with that one !
Hello, bumblebee! The full text of Old World Gods is not available anywhere except in my book, Wrong Side of A Fistfight. The book has a number of never-before-seen poems that aren’t available anywhere online.
As for poems similar to Profane–Old World Gods is in a similar vein, although it has more of a narrative to it. There’s also As If In Prayer and Prayer Book.
September 22, 2015
"Tell me about the days
where your body feels nothing
like a body:
where it feels like a..."
where your body feels nothing
like a body:
where it feels like a place
soldiers lay down arms and
forget to come back for them.
Tell me what it’s like
holding yourself at the barrel
of someone else’s gun
without pulling the trigger or
what you intend to do with
all these hand-me-down war relics
when the fighting is over.
Tell me how love
never did you any favors.
Tell me about all the temples
you burned and rebuilt again
and how no one’s ever thanked you
for a hard day’s work.
Tell me about your therapist
when he diagnosed your depression:
tell me about the softness he carried
in his shoulders or
the way he held his hands
like an apology.
Maybe
if we keep falling for every
weary, doe-eyed soul we ever meet,
one of them is bound
to love us back, eventually.
Accuracy by volume.
They’ve leveled cities that way:
that’s how you handle
machine guns
and atom bombs
(and you and me).
We’ll just keep loving.
We’ll just keep shooting.
We’ll just keep hurting (ourselves)
till it works.”
- ACCURACY BY VOLUME by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
I can’t believe I never posted this killer selfie on...
I can’t believe I never posted this killer selfie on tumblr.
Bombshell looks.
"This time of night
we used to take forever off the stove
and save it for the morning.
I..."
we used to take forever off the stove
and save it for the morning.
I remember,
your hands were feather-soft
and I wanted to keep you
in bottles and boxes
for safe-keeping.
I remember,
your promises could
chase away the monsters
in my heart and
thrill it back into beating.
This is the best time of night
for big, gentle promises
we have no way of keeping.
This is when I loved you
most:
your tongue all thick with stars,
the moon on my back,
the future,
less than a ghost.”
- I ALWAYS TRY TO TEXT YOU AT 3AM by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
