ASHLEY KREUTTER

THE CLAIRVOYANT ONE—

(i)
Murky bathwater
            leads soon-to-be martyrs
            & visionaries
                                    to clairvoyance.

(ii)
Let’s move gently from room to room
as not to wake the dead that rest here,
in this space, a foot-by-foot perfect square
holds more than I could
in two hands.

(iii)
Lay the tigerliliesdown
press their petals to the wet stone,
Blooms wrapped in these inky pages
through this, I can hold her.

WRITHE

i.
She bites the inside of her wrist like a chicken bone.
Hiding behind the tendon.
Her eyeteeth speak volumes.
Kool-aid bit lipped
Knobby-kneed smudgeness.
Over-eager giggly, mary-janeness of anorexia
leg over the barre,
she is the jewelry box ballerina.

ii.
grazing across her floor
with feather boas and dusty keds
rabbit model girl
hiding behind bangs
she mixed it with pink lemonade pixie stick powder &
stabbed it into the meat of her left palm:
a bubblepophiss
blownsugar
bonechina
clangshatter

fissures & lines
& lines
& lines
& cease.

(WHEN THE OUIJA SPELLS HER NAME)

& then:
How to make my voice loud.
To properly read punctuation
& to use it to my advantage, motherfuckers.
How to shriek, how to dump my drunk
mother’s Corona down a hotel room sink
because I was afraid she’d fuck another man
she having just divorced my father.

& now:
Throwing salt over my shoulder, tattoos
will always be apotropaic, candles for St. Jude.
Candles for St. Jude. Words that flow when I
cannot flow. Blood that comes through my eyes when I cry.
Wool blankets, pillows to bite.

Ashley Kreutter is a poet who detests form and meter, however, she loves Sylvia Plath. She writes about the girls one would see in Degas paintings and the girls who inspire broody, post punk music. Her interests include her cat, bad reality TV, yoga, coffee, and black eyeliner. She graduated with an MFA from New England College in 2015 and is already tired of not being in school. Ashley Kreutter is an ampersand.