Tag: Ashley Kirkland

To the Livestock Truck Broken Down On the Side of the Highway by Ashley Kirkland

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To the Livestock Truck Broken Down On the Side of the Highway

All I can think of
are the pigs, cold
in their stalls, wide
flanks bare to the
November morning,
the little hairs on their
backsides blowing
in the wind.

Some might say
they are built
for it, but I think
we all appreciate
warmth, the comfort
of a closed door.

*

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, Boats Against the Current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, ONE ART, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.

Lost by Ashley Kirkland

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Lost

I’ve lost my mother many times, enough
to fill a lifetime. She is always slipping away
from me. The first time (a classic) in a 90’s turn of events

in a department store, I pressed my face to soft silk shirts
& got lost in a rack of clothing. A woman found me crying
in the center of the circular rack. Years later, we nearly lost

her when her heart blew open in the living room,
her aorta fraying like the end of a rope. The ghost I was floated
across campus for weeks. A teacher called me honey

and I nearly cried: nearly motherless at 21. Now, 36,
my husband and I talk in the kitchen on a Sunday
afternoon, rain drizzling in late November, football helmets

clashing on the tv in the other room, and we talk about her
health as if it concerns us and I say he’ll be devastated,
referring to our older son, who loves my mother. She doesn’t realize

I say who she’s hurting by not taking care of herself as if her health
is something within our control. I was 21 & I said goodbye to her
over the phone and drove home while she was in surgery,

her chest splayed open on the operating table, her aorta
a patchwork. Now, 36, I stop and listen every time I hear sirens
to see if they turn in the direction of her street. I lose her again

and again, dread the day when I get the call (again),
when my father tells me to come home now, and I have to tell
my son, in words I don’t yet know, what has happened.

*

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, Boats Against the Current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirkland.bsky.social and lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.

Women by Ashley Kirkland

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment
Women
My friend and I are talking (we talk most mornings,
it’s one of those things that keeps us going) &
she’s telling me about her boss, how she makes her
feel like a small girl in trouble & yet her boss compares
women to the sun: constant, strong. My friend tells me she’s neither,
maybe she’s conflating women and mothers, she says, & I think
about the link between youth & shame, how the connection follows
us into adulthood, how even now I feel so small when I feel
shame. My friend says she’s more like a lake because she has boundaries
& depth. An ocean would be too big, she says. I don’t tell her,
but I think she could be an ocean if she wanted; a hurricane tearing
through the joint. I’m a poet so I think of the moon– bright & ever-
changing, guiding, pulling. She takes on all of the metaphors
then, and says, it’s funny, you know, that we have this urge to compare
women to part of nature when we are nature. She tells me about women
in the Bible, the word ezer, how the phrasing the first time it appears
is stronger than the male translators ever gave us credit for, which, I think,
is what we’ve always fought. Metaphors that underestimate us, make us
larger than life. Myth. The sun, the lake, the moon, when we’ve really
only ever been ourselves, which is to say, everything all at once.
*
Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, Boats Against the Current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirkland.bsky.social and lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.

Midwestern Holiday by Ashley Kirkland

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Midwestern Holiday

There is nothing
           quite like walking up
to a house with

the front door open,
           looking through
the storm door, into

someone else’s world
           even for just a moment
before entering, before

the aroma of funeral potatoes
           and butter wafts
in from the kitchen, the crack

of a beer, uncle’s
           laughter rising
above it all.

*

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, Boats Against the Current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirkland.bsky.social and lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.