Published poems by Veronica Ashenhurst, who has Severe ME

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers,

It has been a tough year for me so far, as my mum (who is my caregiver) and I got COVID at the end of January. The infection was very hard on both of us, and it has taken me several months to return to some form of ME/CFS baseline. It saddens me that so many folks have simply adopted a "COVID is over" narrative. The virus remains serious. As a result of the setback, I have not been able to write as much poetry as I might have liked. That said, I do want to share one poem of mine that was recently published. In the poem, I've aimed to weave together aspects of the ME experience with some themes from Shakespeare. I hope you enjoy it.

Quintessence of Dust

A friend sent Hamlet. But my cells contain
a tyrant who made me set the play aside,
for he metes out strength in scraps. Yesterday,
I washed my hair, my heart sped, I lay down.
Now, I turn in bed for Act II, press play,
hear Denmark’s prince say there is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
I flinch at the words: they seem to mock
my faithless limbs. Still, I sit up to view
the dusk, winter’s pearl. Disease has taught me
defeat, and here, by rose light, I glimpse
the body’s opposites: this fallen clay —
yet, also, this soliloquy on being,
taut and wistful as a violin.


The poem appears in the Spring issue of MORIA Literary Magazine, edited by the students at Woodbury University in Los Angeles:
https://www.moriaonline.com/issue-t...6/quintessence-of-dust-by-veronica-ashenhurst
 
Hi S4ME Poetry Readers,

Thank you for your kind words. I am glad you liked "Quintessence of Dust." Today I'm sharing my most recently published poem. I hope it resonates with you.


Sorrow’s Gardener

I’m apprenticed to you. Through time’s screen
I glimpse you in the garden with
galoshes and a spade. You say

you know how to plant sorrow. I
have sorrows, I reply. I’ve lain
in bed these years, sifting silence.

My day is faded like the room,
the wheelchair waits, my thoughts insist
the world has turned away. You give

me your hand, that you might bury
my cares in soft earth. June’s a choir,
you claim; it can turn pain to

peonies that flush with life for
ten heady days. Yet still I clutch grief,
doubtful that blooms could grow in such

soil of loss, for I am your halting,
younger self—scared of hope—even
as you sing the mending sun’s return.


The poem appears in MedMic: Conversations, Culture and Creativity from the Health Care Community. MedMic is an online magazine geared toward healthcare professionals. I feel it's important for poetry about the ME/CFS experience to appear in these kinds of online spaces. Have a look:
https://medmic.com/sorrows-gardener/
 
Hi S4ME Poetry Readers,

Thank you for reading my work - it means a lot. The poem I'm sharing today appears in a British poetry journal. My earlier work appears primarily in American journals, so I am glad my poetry about the ME/CFS experience is now resonating across the pond. The poem grapples with medical gaslighting. The journal editor chose to include a content warning, so please do take care when reading if you've also had painful interactions with doctors (a sad reality for many ME/CFS patients).


Art Therapy


Looking at Cézanne’s sketch, Boy Beset by Rats,
I feel kinship with the flailing boy, for
memory plagues me as a creature might—
sharp-toothed, squealing. I recall the hospital,
exhaustion stilling my limbs like venom.
The doctor claims I just believe I’m ill,
implying I chase pity. I’d like to drown
his words as if they were rodents from that sketch,
for the doctor is mistaken. But he
flicks his hair and looks so sure. My breath comes short.
I grip the book of Cézanne’s paintings, flip
past the boy, find a still life: the sea-blue vase,
three fruits, sunlight’s yellow magic. I sigh,
and for now, bitter memory darts away.


The poem appears in Acropolis Journal, where you can also view artwork by Audrey Carroll, which is paired with my poem:

https://acropolisjournaluk.wixsite.com/acropolisjournal/veronica-ashenhurst-art-therapy
 
Hi S4ME Poetry Readers,

For ME Awareness Week, I’m sharing a poem that draws on the Greek myth of Phaeton, a half-god who wanted to prove himself by driving his father Apollo’s sun chariot through the sky. Being inexperienced, however, Phaeton crashed. This story resonates for me. I fell ill with ME quite young, and I also wanted to prove myself. I pushed through my illness in the early years—there was nowhere to turn for medical advice, then—and my health worsened as a result.

Meaningful treatments are long overdue.

My poem appears in the journal Please See Me, where you can also listen to me read the poem if you prefer listening to reading text:

https://pleaseseeme.com/issue-15-ha...-greek-myth-veronica-ashenhurst-poetry-psm15/

A Greek Myth and a Long Illness

Phaeton longed to drive the day,
to steer Apollo’s sun-chariot through the sky.
I might have warned him not to go, but he
would have defied me. His fate quickened:
the horses reeled, the coach plunged, with searing
sun, to earth. To save the globe, Zeus pierced Phaeton
with a thunderbolt, and tucked him

in paradise, a constellation
to his name. In death, the charioteer seems wiser.
Behind clouds, he keeps vigil over me.
Phaeton knows youth has a mind to dare, to win,
but I, at twenty-four, forgot him—
for I was like him. I chased grades, and planned goals
like columns for a Corinth temple. I couldn’t
foresee the blood transfusions, the pillboxes,
the tangled years. At once, my body fell,
yet I lived on, ill, fixed in a bed,

my wheel-less carriage to nowhere.
Here, I taste dread: my legs won’t walk the hall,
while notes from friends feel brief, distracted.
Phaeton calls down: “There is no shame in our grief!”
I exhale, then, and with slow cold hands,
near a green teacup, I begin to stitch
a chariot of my own making.
 
Thanks for sharing this, Veronica. I particularly enjoyed hearing your voice reciting the poem. If I had known your nationality before, I had forgotten, and I congratulated myself on recognising your accent as being Canadian rather than American – possibly because I recognised the similarity with Mark Carney’s accent.

I appreciate that some poets prefer not to explain the intended meaning of their poetry beyond the words of the poems themselves, but I am left wondering what you meant by the chariot you are stitching. Is poetry your chariot or something else?

I only ask to share my response. Please don’t feel obliged to explain unless you would like to.
 
Hi S4ME Poetry Readers,

I’m touched that you’ve engaged with my work. @Robert 1973, I saw from your website that you’re also a poet. We live in a cultural moment of fragmented attention, and I would love for poetry to be an antidote, a path back to reflection.

Diane Seuss, a poet whose work I admire, observed that “the ‘I’ in a poem isn’t necessarily the you that walks around. The minute you commit it to the page it’s an invention.”

So, the “I” who stitches a chariot in my poem can be viewed from various perspectives. The chariot itself can also hold multiple meanings. The Greek gods who drove the sun-chariot were not just moving the sun across the sky, they were also driving fate. Can fate be steered at all in the context of serious illness? What agency is feasible? Perhaps poetry can be a chariot to drive the day, yes. Witnessing, abiding, and enduring are also ways to stitch a chariot. Sometimes, though, pain and grief take the reins.

Other interpretations are also possible. Each poem is, after all, a gift-box for the reader to open, interpret, and re-open again.
 
Veronica said:
I’m touched that you’ve engaged with my work. @Robert 1973, I saw from your website that you’re also a poet.
Click to expand...
I’m pleased that you’ve read some of my poems. I don’t think of myself as a poet – just someone that writes poems and songs occasionally.

One of the unfinished poems in the junk yard of my mind is about is about identity. I will share it if I ever manage to finish it – or at least get it to a stage where it resembles a complete poem. One of my favourite quotes is that a poem is never finished, only abandoned.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00011125
Paul Valéry 1871–1945
French poet, critic, and man of letters

A poem is never finished; it's always an accident that puts a stop to it—i.e. gives it to the public.
  1. often quoted in W. H. Auden' s paraphrase, ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned’
    Littérature (1930)
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top