Kate Ashton
Genesis
Who says the world awaits us warmly – to be
entered easily as a needle into yolk or single
butt of one smug sperm, the seedling’s
stunned breakthrough, kippah awry
and gulping air? I
have languished long
in the shrieking cellar
and the silent room
where all forgetting is
accomplished.
Ask and it shall be given you – the pat
answer and the long stare. A-swoon
as beech that joyously breathes in
its bluebell antidote to spring
you shall beg for distraction
or respite before the search
for clues from sky-eyed
soothsayer patient
as the past
take today – I discovered my mother
just as though nothing had happened,
still inhabiting her unshared now
(how she lived among all those
chairs and crouching curs
I’ll never know)
it was her way of erasing
pains and she had a great
many of them, all quite mad
and requiring medication:
give it another day the doctor
said then up the dosage send
her home to bake scones ah
how we loved her after-school
crumpets fork-toasted at the
hearth, hot buttered devoured
before they charred cratered
and spewing magma rancid as
the sisterhood – we
shall no longer tolerate
you men forever touching us
(me too) forever lapping up
the credit and the cash
we shall no longer
suffer it
or the aftermath
give us a big cut
along the belly
give us a cut
a little lower down give us
a chance.
words
at twelve I came into the world
and I’ll tell you what happened
when beauty beat its breast at
my door begging for entry
like a refugee head hung in
shame at its own suffering –
I admitted it – I could not help
thinking of wings, slight slender
darkness standing sentry on a
lane, prayer pulsing into flight,
furtive forgetful foraging
for home hung from
an attic beam –
while down below my mother
gave birth to words head-first
like doodlebugs... I’m still
defusing them as best I can
in this twilight, scrubbed,
gowned and gloved I
dissect away each stiff
unloved bruise-breasted
thing from nearby tissue –
winter lasts so long
up here almost
nothing survives it.
names
from the beginning we think
of names for things
how when why
we weigh them down with
whether
her womb is freighted
with will be her she
is ageless let her be
nameless and alone
in becoming
we make sure to take
what is ours to make into
tomorrow we say:
he is hours
she is hours
we may sacrifice
him to our god
pray
give us another one a
girl this time
to dress in spring
we shall call her
April
we will call her what
we will if it is all
the same to you
you are not family
you are not one
of us she shall
die young
legs akimbo a gushing
where the crown
should be
she shall not suffer much
it was normal back then
we gave them names
baptised them
gudesire gudewife
godspeed we wrote
them down
and now
we call her apoplexy
of the flesh poor unsexed
willing womb we
name her holy
Theotokos
I did not love her half as much
as the mauve scabious for
example or bee orchis
or tremulous
anemone and later I
uprooted she who
wavered rootlessly
in her beauty
like lotus
afloat upon the world
volitionless as all places
of pilgrimage
and prayer
a pale altar I put her away
from me like sin I would
not succumb to flare
into fruit to
stare into that flawed fate you
could call it catastrophe
that would not be too
strong an image
ima
mutter mama maman moeder
mem memory she stoops
in the hall speaking
of dogs
and something
to eat
you are still inconsolable
ravenous for a treat
neither hard nor soft
or warm nor quite
so cold
let go she holds me
close like unasked
relinquishment
dire patterned
on the past
I call her sky-lynched
apocalypse of the mind
lost couch high
dereliction I
always
did my best
for you madman he calls
out cloud-clad cataclysm
mesmerised madonna
arboured among
monks
purged of impurity by
some sin-seared priest
sculptress of air
she reeks
of frankincense and
her toes are bare
they touch her
everywhere
sometimes she is sold
I knew her by her old
name: untold
veiled in obsidian purdah
hidden as her hair pinned
up between dark galaxies
hear our entreaties you
can hardly reach us now
you see we’ve roamed
so far from home
Who says the world awaits us warmly – to be
entered easily as a needle into yolk or single
butt of one smug sperm, the seedling’s
stunned breakthrough, kippah awry
and gulping air? I
have languished long
in the shrieking cellar
and the silent room
where all forgetting is
accomplished.
Ask and it shall be given you – the pat
answer and the long stare. A-swoon
as beech that joyously breathes in
its bluebell antidote to spring
you shall beg for distraction
or respite before the search
for clues from sky-eyed
soothsayer patient
as the past
take today – I discovered my mother
just as though nothing had happened,
still inhabiting her unshared now
(how she lived among all those
chairs and crouching curs
I’ll never know)
it was her way of erasing
pains and she had a great
many of them, all quite mad
and requiring medication:
give it another day the doctor
said then up the dosage send
her home to bake scones ah
how we loved her after-school
crumpets fork-toasted at the
hearth, hot buttered devoured
before they charred cratered
and spewing magma rancid as
the sisterhood – we
shall no longer tolerate
you men forever touching us
(me too) forever lapping up
the credit and the cash
we shall no longer
suffer it
or the aftermath
give us a big cut
along the belly
give us a cut
a little lower down give us
a chance.
words
at twelve I came into the world
and I’ll tell you what happened
when beauty beat its breast at
my door begging for entry
like a refugee head hung in
shame at its own suffering –
I admitted it – I could not help
thinking of wings, slight slender
darkness standing sentry on a
lane, prayer pulsing into flight,
furtive forgetful foraging
for home hung from
an attic beam –
while down below my mother
gave birth to words head-first
like doodlebugs... I’m still
defusing them as best I can
in this twilight, scrubbed,
gowned and gloved I
dissect away each stiff
unloved bruise-breasted
thing from nearby tissue –
winter lasts so long
up here almost
nothing survives it.
names
from the beginning we think
of names for things
how when why
we weigh them down with
whether
her womb is freighted
with will be her she
is ageless let her be
nameless and alone
in becoming
we make sure to take
what is ours to make into
tomorrow we say:
he is hours
she is hours
we may sacrifice
him to our god
pray
give us another one a
girl this time
to dress in spring
we shall call her
April
we will call her what
we will if it is all
the same to you
you are not family
you are not one
of us she shall
die young
legs akimbo a gushing
where the crown
should be
she shall not suffer much
it was normal back then
we gave them names
baptised them
gudesire gudewife
godspeed we wrote
them down
and now
we call her apoplexy
of the flesh poor unsexed
willing womb we
name her holy
Theotokos
I did not love her half as much
as the mauve scabious for
example or bee orchis
or tremulous
anemone and later I
uprooted she who
wavered rootlessly
in her beauty
like lotus
afloat upon the world
volitionless as all places
of pilgrimage
and prayer
a pale altar I put her away
from me like sin I would
not succumb to flare
into fruit to
stare into that flawed fate you
could call it catastrophe
that would not be too
strong an image
ima
mutter mama maman moeder
mem memory she stoops
in the hall speaking
of dogs
and something
to eat
you are still inconsolable
ravenous for a treat
neither hard nor soft
or warm nor quite
so cold
let go she holds me
close like unasked
relinquishment
dire patterned
on the past
I call her sky-lynched
apocalypse of the mind
lost couch high
dereliction I
always
did my best
for you madman he calls
out cloud-clad cataclysm
mesmerised madonna
arboured among
monks
purged of impurity by
some sin-seared priest
sculptress of air
she reeks
of frankincense and
her toes are bare
they touch her
everywhere
sometimes she is sold
I knew her by her old
name: untold
veiled in obsidian purdah
hidden as her hair pinned
up between dark galaxies
hear our entreaties you
can hardly reach us now
you see we’ve roamed
so far from home
© Copyright Kate Ashton 2019
Kate Ashton was born in Beith and is a writer and translator. She lived and worked for nearly 25 years in the Netherlands before returning to Scotland in 2003. Her poems have appeared in UK magazines including THE SHOp, Agenda, Shearsman and Long Poem Magazine, and her first collection, Who by Water, came out from Shearsman Books in 2016.
