Elizabeth Ashe

Romantic Poetry

I do not send out poems about my girlfriend.
Not really, though we've been together five years.
The poems are too close to submit,
to launch at buoys in the night sky.
I want to hold them close.
Keep them close, wrap my arms around them
like I do her as we sleep.
Hum them unintelligibly, like the cats
purring their hearts at us.
I want to keep the poems together
because there are not enough of them,
for all the memories that remind me I love you.
Because I must write more down
and work them with attention.
Like our relationship. A mirroring page,
so that one day, I can submit them as a book.
A marriage in poems and in print,
an interlocked line of buoys in the night sky
to warm any who read them.





Elizabeth Ashe earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, and an MFA in Multidisciplinary Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was an Associate Editor for Fourth River. She is the Administrative Director and teacher for an arts non-profit. She is also helping relaunch the New Art Examiner in DC. Her art has recently been on view at Zenith Gallery and Art All Night. Her poetry has recently appeared Yellow Medicine Review, Lascaux Press, White Stag Publishing, and Red Ink International, among others. Ashe lives in Washington, D.C. with her girlfriend and their three cats. She has a studio only a few blocks away, which is nigh impossible in DC.