Poems by Elizabeth Ashe

Amateurs

You should do amateur night
he says again, once we're at the strip club.
This almost blind man,
my 'boyfriend' for a year.

He spent all fucking day
trying to convince me,
turn thong, stiletto-propped body
and waxing, into a good idea.
I haven't seen him in three months.
All he cares about is a few
hundred bucks he can waste, if I win.
His, because it's his idea

to use my three years of belly dancing.
He wants other men, to look at me,
want and not have. Men who any woman
would cross the street to avoid,

He survives on want, on false possession.
I won't have him, his dead skin.
I don't care that he's hung. He doesn't have hips
and it's hips I crave.
I just want to take the woman who danced
for us, the pre-nurse not high
on some bath-stall drug,
and drive. She is petite, curled auburn

and deserves a better evening.
Drive out of this Quaker Oats town,
buy a bottle of good wine, forget his number.
This woman, is beautiful.

 ****

Evidence
The night I found earrings
on his night stand table,
he told me it was nothing.
Nothing to see proof
of another woman.
Nothing, just cuddling.
There was no new smell,
as his is omnipresent.
Red glass beads, worth a few bucks
and a hair tangler.
I knew whose they were.
I'm not the blind one,
he flirts with her more than me.
She's the one with thighs
and hips thrice mine, enough hips
that his bony pelvis
doesn't revolt her.

****

Keys

Your key chain is simple -

four keys, an enamel daisy.

You hand them to me,

beause your arms are full of books.

I don't know which one opens your door -

not that one, I don't know whose that is.

I recognize this not-yours key,

its the one I gave you last year, to my place.

If your keychain were as full as mine

with skeleton keys, one to my old studio,

maybe I could excuse this,

the you not remembering.

Like everything else about you these days,

I remember to smile anyway.

****

Elizabeth Ashe received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. When not writing poetry, Ashe is a visual artist. She was an Assistant Editor for Fourth River. Her work has been been previously published by the Synergy Project, Poetry on Buses organized by 4Culture and Insert .