Friday, March 25, 2011

Women Who Write: Ashley Farmer

I used to think of myself as primarily a prose poet. And times are I want to sit down again and write a whole book of quarter-page little things, especially when I read really spectacular examples of them. Here, by Ashley Farmer, is one from the latest Wigleaf--"Man Found Dead in Graveyard":

The iris, says the newsflash, is a thumbprint. When I rub fists to eyelids I follow a river down a blank tunnel. Reemerged, I'm unspecified in an unlit town, atop a hill, washing myself in a river of irises. (I fingered that flower once, an iris. Split the petal across my thumb like skin on skin and never touched one again).
From a friend, I received a sketch of a face: Have You Seen This Man? The man who shows up in dreams? The same man materializes behind thousands of lethargic eyes. Dreamers come forward saying they recall his gaze, he's their ex-this/that, he's maybe a man they used to know. They flash his photograph.


Wigleaf / 3.22.11

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