Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 146
September 22, 2015
General reminder that if you love a book (especially if it’s published through an independent or...
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!
"The summer I turned twenty, I cut off all my hair,
got wicked drunk and took shots at the..."
got wicked drunk and took shots at the stars,
kissed a girl for the first time.
I didn’t fall in love, but I tried to.
It was the summer where three people died—
where tragedy was never more than
two weeks away from itself.
First, it was Allison’s brother.
Then, Mary’s fiancée.
Then, my father.
One. Two. Three.
The men in our lives, gone in a heartbeat—
too much death under one roof,
too much emptiness for the Texas sun
to lay claim to.
We dug up parts of ourselves we
could never put back in the ground,
that summer.
We learned that sometimes
people wear grief too differently
to hold one another:
that no one knows what to say because
condolences don’t pry nails out of coffins,
that tombstones are not grave-markers for the dead,
but stone slabs the living carry on their shoulders.
We learned that the aftermath of death is
unique as a fingerprint.
Allison’s was brave.
Mary’s was quiet.
And mine,
mine was furious—
I wasn’t done with him, yet.
There were too many battles left unfinished—
this was not how I wanted
to win the war.
Grief looks ugly in the mouth of a girl
still relearning how to love her father.
It is a useless extra limb on the body of someone
with ten years of bad blood to make up for.
When you know your father as little more
than sickness in a skin-suit, there
is nowhere for the rage to go when you’ve lost him.
I didn’t speak at the funeral because
I couldn’t trust myself to be kind and
much as I wanted to be angry at my father,
his memory didn’t deserve that.
My mother didn’t deserve that.
See, there is this impossible love that children carry
even for the parents that hurt them,
and I remember what he was like
before the pain and the medication
got the best of him.
And I just wanted to be good enough
for that man.
To everyone who knew me when my father was alive—
to my mother, especially.
I am sorry for the rage I hung my shoulders with.
I am sorry for becoming
all the worst parts of him.
I’m sorry that I went looking for a place
to bury all that heartache and that
I became graveyard, instead.
But the one who taught me
loud,
the one who taught me
chaos and thunder and boom
was Dad.
And I learned it well.
I didn’t have Dad’s excuse: how
the medication wore my father’s face
for him: shook my home down to its foundations
then left when there was nothing left
to lay waste to.
I just kicked and screamed and rattled
hoping that someone would hear me.
I am quiet, now.
Dad
is quiet now.
And sometimes
I miss the way his voice
could fill the house.”
- THE SUMMER I TURNED TWENTY by Ashe Vernon
September 21, 2015
Would you also benefit if I bought Belly of the Beast?
That’s a very good question, thank you for asking! I absolutely benefit from Belly of the Beast sales, as well, and I would still be hugely grateful if you bought it.
I’m pushing Wrong Side of a Fistfight so hard because it’s currently more beneficial to me in the immediate, simply because of the way contracts are laid out. That being said, I would still be super happy if you bought Belly of the Beast. Every little bit helps.
Hello, darlings.So, things are really rocky for me, right now. For the first time since I moved out...
Hello, darlings.
So, things are really rocky for me, right now. For the first time since I moved out on my own more than two years ago, I am faced with the potential reality of not being able to make rent. I have one job and I’m already in the process of being hired at a second, but the paychecks won’t make it to me before rent is due.
This time next month I will be financially stable again, but that knowledge does me no good, right now. Right now, my books are the only thing I have to produce income for myself, and if I don’t sell enough in the next few days, I don’t really know what I’m going to do.
Please consider buying a copy of Wrong Side of a Fistfight. I’m not asking for you to give me your money for nothing–I want to put copies of this book that I have spent so many hours on and spilled so much of my heart into, into your hands.
September 20, 2015
"The sadness starts in my stomach—
too familiar to be nausea. No,
it feels like slow poison,..."
The sadness starts in my stomach—
too familiar to be nausea. No,
it feels like slow poison, like
decades of swallowing depression.
I know better than anyone else,
I have always been toxic to myself.
The apathy waterfalls down from my back,
into my legs, gets heavier and heavier,
until my feet are blocks of concrete and I
am settling into the brick and mortar:
a front row seat to my home’s foundations.
With a spot like this,
why would I ever want to leave?
Anxiety is an IV drip, too thick to go easy
into my veins. It’s always just
under the skin. It’s always
the worst kind of electricity.
But the love—
the love I have always carried in my teeth.
They say you have to love yourself
before you can love anyone else.
It’s not because you won’t know how to.
Or because you don’t deserve to.
It’s because love is not enough to un-hate yourself,
and no matter how much they feed you,
it will taste like a lie you force down with sugar.
You will look for the day it sours.
You will leave it in the heat and
curdle it yourself.
And you will blame them.
Depression is not the Big Bad Wolf.
He doesn’t knock at the door,
blow the house down.
The monsters under the bed aren’t half as scary
as the gaping nothing that opened
like a sinkhole just under my chest.
Depression has always been
the stomach ache that never quits,
the uninvited guest in my body.
Depression is like the feeling when
someone talks shit about your best friend,
but you’re too much of a coward
to defend them.
It’s like that.
Over and over again.
Some days are just bad days.
I don’t always do right
by the people around me.
I can’t even do right by myself, yet.
- ANATOMY OF A RELAPSE by Ashe Vernon
"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
Do you want a SIGNED copy of Belly of the Beast?SURE YOU DObut I have less than 15 copies...
Do you want a SIGNED copy of Belly of the Beast?
SURE YOU DO
but I have less than 15 copies left!!
Which means you better hurry!
And send an email to ashevernonpoetry@yahoo.com!
Mention my spoken word album and I’ll include a FREE download code!
<3 <3 <3 <3
September 19, 2015
"You are a language I am no longer fluent in / but still remember how to read."
- Ashe Vernon, from “Skeleton Song,” Wrong Side of a Fistfight
"I dug through the landfill of your chest
and found the meadow where
the sun god goes
to rest his..."
and found the meadow where
the sun god goes
to rest his eyes.
I thought, this must be where Mother Earth
pressed your heart between her hands,
because I could feel her fingerprints
seared to the curve of your ribs.
I pilfered your dark places—
the ones where the moon likes to hide.
I found the parts of yourself
you thought you were supposed
to be ashamed of.
I kissed all your secrets.
They looked too much like mine.
Truth is, I have no idea
if we were any good for one another,
but I know our demons all got along
with each other just fine.”
- HERE’S TO THE HOLY UNHOLY, by Ashe Vernon
