No Pulp: 3 Poems
Ashley Cline
An avid introvert, full-time carbon-based life-form and aspiring himbo, Ashley Cline's poetry has appeared in 404 Ink, Okay Donkey, Kissing Dynamite, and HAD—among others. A Pushcart nominee and Best of the Net 2020 finalist, her debut chapbook, "& watch how easily the jaw sings of god," is available now (Glass Poetry Press, 2021), while "should the earth reclaim you" (Bone & Ink Press) and "cowabungaly yours at the end of the world" (Gutslut Press) are forthcoming. Once, in the summer of 2019, she crowd-surfed an inflatable sword to Carly Rae Jepsen, and her best at all-you-can-eat sushi is 5 rolls in 11 minutes. Twitter: @the_Cline. Instagram: @clineclinecline. Linktree: @ashleycline.
the way the universe will end, scenario no. 1
by now you know that anything can be beautiful inside of a poem—
& so: you write yourself into one / & it’s here that you think: curb your
gods. it’s here, that you think / you’ve got your heart three ways, sweetie.
& it’s here: that you think of the bird / & how they can fly because they
are hollow / know how their bones beneath feathers spiral like miniature
galaxies, pneumatized; or like sun-dried magicians / & it’s here that you
think of yourself / how your hollowness differs from that of the bird’s—
how it lives in your body & holds you too close / how it makes you——
heavier, somehow; unfit for flight / but by now you have learned to stop
wishing yourself a ghost / & so: you wish to be something more sturdy,
more solid, instead / like a nice piece of furniture, or the only thing that
survives the fire because, by now / you are so tired of spilling into your
own hands, & so: you pluck them from your wrists / & let your body fall
to the floor, freely & with grace—& it’s then / that you plant your hands
in the garden, palms up / so that they might always catch the sun. & it’s
there that a boy will bloom come spring / & know that he will be blue;
know that he will be blue & filthy / & happy to see you—& just know:
you will name him after everything that you could never be.
everyone i know is disappearing
not literally, though maybe. it depends on how you weigh a memory.
do you turn it over in your hands? palm it smooth as birth? or do you bring
it to your mouth, rest its heft against your cheek & let it melt on the tongue?
they say nostalgia causes cancer. artificial sweetness gulped down hot & whole,
but you remember like you don’t mind. say you’d rather kick it clean, anyway.
whatever that means. say imagine the ostrich—& so, i do—i imagine being in love
with myself in a way that cannot be mistaken for cowardice; in a way that does
not end in tributaries or tributes, or in mute teeth & mixtapes left unlistened to—
& i do not know this girl, but i’d like to. she seems like someone who would not
click on the article how to read the doomsday clock—because she does not need to
split time open & count its rings; because she did not read how to rename a place,
& so, she sings everywhere a pop song, instead—the kitchen. cut to the feeling blue.
the bedroom. touch & go disco. & this patience? learned from gladys. so that her
slanted house blushes gladiolus in the night; softens pelvis into garden dirt,
& suddenly—petals.
no pulp, or a lesson in permeance
& suddenly the summer heat blushes mango ripe / buries her hurricane
stone in my throat / & this is a body pressed: reserve the juice—
pour it into the cheek of another & call it magnolia tree / call it 150 hands
at your back / i need a witness for all these miracles—
the dogwoods dressed in dappled fever / & you, making a pupil of my tongue
like i said: miracles / like i said—
i scatter hair everywhere i go, i will haunt these lemon groves sour / so save
the rinds & divide the flesh / make a pulpit out of all of this—
this is my body: now eat.
