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Michael Simms: American Ash (text and video)
Here is the title poem from my collection of poems American Ash (Ragged Sky, 2020). - American Ash The Veteran Beside the barn a huge stack of logs cut and split with imperfect symmetry and Howard his bald head like a bullet is in his undershirt Marine tattoos on his bulging biceps and I remember things he’s told me about the Nam and the drugs and living on the street and finally Meeting Suzanne who loved him whole again. They moved here to raise horses which healed him until Suzanne passed from cancer and he wept in my arms like a baby and started drinking again . Invasive Species Howard says back up your truck we’ll load er up Ash? I ask having seen the stumps beside the road Yeah he says You know it’s against the law to haul firewood cross county lines don’t you but it don’t matter no more with ash wood They’re all dead now anyways Emerald ash borers Howard says they come from Asia about thirty years ago and now they pretty much killed every ash in the east a shame he says I offer to pay him for the firewood but he ignores me and we load half a ton in the back of my truck and stand there a minute or two resting and I think They must have looked like old men, the ash trees dry and gray and brittle death spreading from one tree to another down the road . Abandoned Tractor Howard is looking at his forty acre spread where he grew corn and soy and horses It's mostly scrub now He kept the mule that reminds him of him and a few of the horses too old to sell He hasn’t the heart to kill them The soil he and Suzanne worked is fallow, choked with weeds and the smell of failure . Gasoline Old warriors rarely say anything about people they killed or horrors they saw instead they talk about the fun stuff of war the killer weed and the mama-san they spent a weekend with Or maybe the strange feeling of stepping off the plane in Dulles having misplaced their lives and now living someone else’s Once when he was drinking Howard told me how he watched seventeen Vietnamese children mistakenly machine gunned By our own choppers and Howard and his buddies were ordered to pile the bodies pour gasoline over them and light them on fire And I thought Holy Jesus these men we send to do unspeakable crimes in our name Bury that shit real deep where no one can ever find it
Michael Simms is the editor of Vox Populi. His books include American Ash (Ragged Sky 2020)
Copyright 2020 Michael Simms
Vox Populi 
having misplaced their lives
and now living someone else’s
Thank for those poems. They linger.
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Thank you, Rose Mary!
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Thank you so much Michael. On a gloomy, cold Sunday in Chicago this really helped me and touched me deeply.
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Thank you, Allison!
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I love this collection. It’s one of my go-tos for morning poetry reading (before I write).
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What a lovely thing to say! Thank you, Audrey!
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Loved your reading of Ash, Michael! That gravelly quality of your voiceis a perfect fit—the perfect instrument to wring the music out of yourexperience. George
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Thanks, George!
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A powerful poem and one that sadly often defines my generation.
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Thanks, Barbara!
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