Renée’s work online:
Three pages at www.avocetpress.compage one
page two
page three
Renée AshleyShe Refuses to Believe in Dreams
Trouble — much clatter in the square
— yet, still more sigh than shout.
The great bin of the heart shudders.
The muffled tapping of a shoe. And,
above all this, the dry white moon
in a blue sky. The poor mind swarms,
that thing that is human in shadow and light.
Self-Portrait on a White Table
No one is looking. Lay the heart down
there. Is it trembling? I thought
it might be weary, be sorry, be somehow
canted at a dangerous angle. All night
it kept me thinking: here is the valve
that stokes the soul, here is the soul’s
bright bucket.
All the night
is pounding. Nothing falls from the steep
sky, the moon’s thin light’s gone out.
The great, dark swath of the world beckons
and the heart clicks like an insect
taking what it can from the clamorous night.
Breaking Through the Abstract
There are the father’s hands swimming
through the abstract air — ten solid
fingers breaking gravity’s law. No
subject to mention, no design — just
one man speaking in ten silent tongues,
and his two small shoes shifting as though
the tamped-down dirt beneath them is grab-
bing at his hot and worn-down heels. Here
is a man in danger, ripe with a blue death
he settles himself. Here is the concrete
father. When the hands find their peace
in the earth, the girl is still listening.
Invitation
Whatever name the event has,
it can be understood as an invitation.
— William Dickey
Such luck. And no doubt the wind
blowing through. Every time, each
of the smallest maneuvers — and in
all directions. A largess of open
doors and a staircase that winds
that way forever. Come in…
the handiwork is intricate: here
is perpetual decision, all your dizzy
angels dancing in that ring, every
dream you ever had shifting like
sand toward some indefinite
sea, a silence, perhaps, or
a shout. And here it is again only
different. It is understood: you
are reckless. You are strange. Event
& interruption are aligned. And
endless. Once your eye swings open,
you’ll have to see what that might mean.
