Poetry: Selections From Ash Ehmka

call me kiddo / call me back

 

i could wrap baby fingers around your wrist. brittle & cracking. you won’t hold my hand anymore. i’m panicking at the bus stop & you’re five hours too far to care. there’s no 

terminal. you never did learn to drive. i can’t remember the last thing you said before i saw your ribs poke through paling skin. take your iron before the wind splits you in half. please. cars keep speeding past me & you’re the only one who knows how to stop. i’d paint the world orange & jar the star’s if it meant you’d dye my hair again. you promised we were still sisters. will you be here come june?

 

 

 

guidance says i should go to yale but i can’t tell if they mean the college or the hospital

 

i'm a ghost & i don’t know why my feet move anymore / cadaver conversations / i don’t think i’m a man because i can cook & clean / i told my bio teacher formaldehyde was prison / my body is not your science anymore / draining the cells from my spinach / calling it science class instead / i had anne carson for lunch & two croutons / the word of the day was fulgent but i didn’t feel very bright / i’ll wear spf five hundred at graduation / maybe i’ll radiate then / 2028 & the world ends so why should i take advanced placement / mom, i’m sorry they’ll never put my portrait in the capitol / hillary, i know i promised but these are extenuating circumstances / all the printer paper signs in the world can’t patch this atmosphere 

 

 

 

I’m Baptizing You With My Spit

 

Your curtains aren’t drawn,

I saw you,

black books and another.

But you aren’t like the others,

you’re all mine in that imagination gift.

 

Christian woman,

Your hair is always up.

Don’t you know that bun

should be in your oven

not on your head?

 

Those books you read bite back,

the PTA deems them hellish.

Put them into the flames.

After you make my steak,

I'll burn you at it.

 

Why does the artist love you?

The world needs to know.

I’ll crucify you in cardboard oil.

This paint just can’t get enough,

I just can’t get enough.

 

I’ll bleed you dry for pigment,

and make you clean yourself up.

 

 

 

My Mother Dyes My Hair

 

Like her mother taught her to color hers.

1970’s cosmetologist, 

learnt how to bleach her own hair

& please her fathers Aryan mind. 

 

My mother went blond freshman year

to match her mother’s vision.

I went bruise-black.

My grandmother snapped in sobs 

when she sawed it off,

I think she’d dye happy if I were blond.

I think i’d dye too.

 

I pray to erase

brown-haired-brown-eyed identity

at Polish-Catholic pew, 

Donorovich pray for my sins. 

I just wanted to be your

Herbst smart German girl.

 

I can’t go out,

god can see that

my roots are showing.

Damaging my scalp, 

five years of Ion permanent color build.

Bathroom haze, 

I think the chemicals are getting to me.

 

 

 

My Father Taught Me How To Lie

 

on the way to his mothers house.

I sank into the too small seat,

stuttering around his half dollar truths. 

 

He doesn’t mention the gambling addiction pamphlets I stick between scratch offs.

I don’t mention the Pure Leaf half lemonade/half iced tea he left on my desk.

We agree tangerine is the best Outshine ice pop.

 

We are both lying.

His favorite is mango,

I prefer lime. 

 

When neither of us reach for tangerine,

he nods approvingly. 

My lessons are paying off. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ash Ehmka is a queer fifteen year old central Connecticut writer living off of Zoloft, drinking Koffee? on the city bus, and crying to Tumblr posts. They got their start writing when they realized mental illness was genetic and their sibling taught them to read poetry. Ash has won silver keys in poetry and humor from Scholastic Arts and Writing and is looking to get published so their cats will stop screaming outside their door.