Quenntis Ashby's Writings
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Article
May.17.2009
There is a time when your unborn child, your writing, begs to be born. This is the moment when the empty page taunts you and screams at you with the beauty of its lines, or lack thereof. It says, “Fill me with your love, feed me your ideas. Impregnate my paper womb with your love of words that can give birth to the sentences of beauty and the angelic paragraphs...
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Article
May.16.2009
They stand, mutely selling bread to the Night Market crowd. A girl in a mini-skirt buys a roll for $10. He claps his hands again, making a sound he cannot hear. Another girl in denim mini-shorts buys a roll. An old man with his little son buy two rolls. So the night continues. Girl after skimpily-clad girl buys roll after roll until all of them are gone. It's 3am...
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Short Story
May.05.2009
She waits.
The room is dark. The curtains are open. The windows are open, too. She can hear the late-night traffic and the sound of the amber light's warning to BE CAREFUL! She sighs in the heat. Her body is drenched with sweat. It's humid and there is no relief in sight. No aircon.
She peels herself off of the wet bed sheet and takes another cold shower in...
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Article
May.03.2009
Let’s go to that park in the middle of our town. You know the one? Yes, it’s quite big with many different kinds of trees. The grass is green in places where people don’t walk. In other places it’s more yellow and worn like a good pair of shoes or that carpet in the hallway.
In this park in the morning on a fresh spring day in March, a man and his son aren’t...
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Poem
Apr.27.2009
morning spring rain
a light drizzle
throughout the day
listen:
swish splash splosh
dribble dribble drip drip
pitter patter pit pat pat
plink plonk plop
dance:
like a falling star
liquid and bright
limbs loose and light
shivers down my spine
follow the drop of rain
as it licks its little tongue
my goose bumps rise and fall in sync
wet wet wet
suck it...
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Article
Apr.15.2009
My mother wore woolen slippers to keep her feet warm. She wore them in fall, in winter, in spring, and also in summer. In fact I can’t really remember a time when they weren’t on her feet.
I remember seeing her feet all the time. While she sat knitting on the bed, her feet would poke out at the bottom end – covered in pink wool. While she was at work in the...
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Poem
Mar.17.2009
Caress and stroke me...
Like a fine silk bathrobe after a hot shower.
My skin tingles.
I swim again:
My body kissing and being kissed.
What does it feel like?
It feels as though I'm kissing water.
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Poem
Feb.22.2009
There be angels here,
White glory clouds my blue eyes
Day ages to night.
There were angels here,
White glory clouded my eyes
Days of flight: gone now.
There be angels here,
There be all my angels here,
In white glory, die.
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Poem
Feb.08.2009
The Big Toe Dances
The shadow draws a line between the light and itself,
fuzzy,
blurred.
The sun strikes a stick,
a flattened smudge of a butt,
and a discarded cigarette.
Leaves lie where they fell:
left abandoned,
curly,
brown.
The stones underneath provide a stage
for the drama of broken things left to chance:
the wind,
my feet...
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Poem
Feb.01.2009
...the summer moon will whisper here,
for a dark song dances this evening.
"What deep secret falls
strangely over you,
my star child?"
Mother Earth asks me.
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About Quenntis
I was born in South Africa in 1976.
Dancing and Singing in CATS: The Musical was the highlight of my career. I also danced for Cape Town City Ballet and the Cape Dance Company.
I live in Taiwan now. When not teaching English, and writing poetry, I go for...
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Quenntis’s Favorite Books
Salamander