Ashley-Elizabeth BestAshley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg, Canada. She was on the poetry shortlist for the 2011 Matrix Litpop Awards and Prism’s Poetry Prize 2012. She has poetry appearing in the Red River Review, Tampa Review, CV2, and Branch Magazine. She recently placed first for poetry in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt 2012 and was the poetry runner up for subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Literary Awards 2012. She has a chapbook published with Cactus Press called Slow States of Collapse. Currently she lives and writes in Kingston.

 

Storming the Sprawl

In this corner,
where tingle-sniff knotted patches of grass
wisp pollen through the drying
breeze, newspapers and wrappers gather
at her feet.

The sky churns terminal clouds,
falls slack and dull into an umber
dusk.

Between the mushrooming buildings,
the distance is scratched by rain.
It riddles the river with dark-wet
pocks of gold light.

Heat withered, she sits on a gnawed
stump, arms stretched towards the
threadlike tear in the sky;

thuggish flutter of leaves
brought to meet the thunder
overhead. There is no

fear on her face, her belly
moonward bent.

 

Aristophanes’s Clouds

When we set out, the moon
met us and declared that
she was angry, for she had
suffered dreadful things.

She said that we do not
observe the days correctly,
but confuse them up and down.

And often, when she
mourns, we are there
laughing.

 

Rendition

She puts on her dance rags,
clustered spangles gloss
her contours, she’s singing
along to the cabbie’s music.

Her feet punished by heels
too high, men in front of
the club admire this weekly
rendition, the laborious
pleasure of life.

There’s more than one man
with her name tattooed
on their skin here, she
left them all behind amidst
the pallid throes of electronic
dance music.

Her hips jag against his groin,
a former conquest ready for more.
They leave the club, wander
the scarp of limestone scales,
Autumn’s ravel of leaves flit
under the weight of the wind.

He’s groping at her body
as they walk the still view
of a swamp. She pulls away—
he hits her, she hits him.
Knuckles wrap her face, she
falls belly up, rock layered

on rock, a choice out of
mystery, hair, a knot
of leaves.