Two Poems by Ashley Roach-Freiman

Ashley Roach-Freiman

Ashley Roach-Freiman

Ashley Roach-Freiman is a librarian and MFA candidate at the University of Memphis where she is Managing Editor of the Pinch Journal. She has poems appearing or forthcoming in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Rock & Sling, Smartish Pacedistrict lit, The Literary Review and Bone Bouquet. She coordinates and hosts the Impossible Language reading series in Memphis, TN.

sorry about the poem with feathers

i know you don’t like how they this
    & this with glass stare
        with unerr gaze  with
    away stay with neck
                        bent

sorry about the poem that spent air
that spun & spun sky
    heat glaze & brood
    can’t undo   
             blue       

the poem that beats the window glass 
sunglare leaf lime bright let
        the great globe twirl & settle
    flight flight & 
                      flight

sorry about the poem that breaks brittle
hollow bones, worm pecked hunger
        God-hole to God-hole       what makes
    a danger in a body what makes a body
            undo

 


Seven of Swords, Reversed

I. 

Thinking about my not lover,

an ant trail winding 
a hundred miles. What I would give to not love

anyone. 

Tell me what it looks like to have
ants running down both arms. 
Fruit or flower?
Unpublishable bees.

II.

Tell me my head is not a wormy loam.
Tell me my tongue is not a bitten place.

III.

The card shows seven heavy swords. A burden.
Reversed it means put your shoes on and carry them. 
Reversed it means break free break free break free. 

IV.

I bit a stranger’s persimmon mouth in an alley.
This is one way to run: beetle-writhe.

V.

Tell me my love is an uninhabitable planet
and I will not reach him in a spaceship of talking.

My not lover is a not lover. 
On this planet. On any planet.

VI.

When upright, the card means betrayal. 
Reversed, the card means look and keep looking.

VII.

Today my husband left a single red poppy 
in a bottle in the window. 
I look and I look and, not looking, I look again.