I need you tonight,
moon, am collapsing in
the curve of you. I found
a wrench in the street this morning.
I need you tonight,
throwing tools
(I am afraid to use)
before me, am reaching to cradle
my own knees—
bruised by misjudgment.
These arms, these fingers are too
stiff. Right tighter, left
looser, bolts land
arranged in a pattern. I found
it could help
reckon through clouds,
stars aligning behind.
Regrets only
raise the lower
tree line equally. Bottom
leaves hidden from sunlight, they die
at the same rate. If I succeed
in not showing up
for another family pageant to appear
before you a doom
eager stranger mouthing
simple questions
about your coniferous forest,
I just might dig up my balance
beam in this black dirt.
Just might please the wind
to respond through your branches overnight.
When I look at the moon, I believe in God
in phases. Because he who rapes the body no
longer rapes thought, I said, “no.”
When I look at the moon, I believe in God in pauses
revealed in shadow giving consent to light.
When a new moon gives back
the whole sky, I’ll begin
to believe this body is mine.
Are you Flaubert’s least
untrue, she won’t dare
ask for fear
your reply might smack
her cheek, lick her lip,
keep her
reaching for more
paint and wall.
I am the scriptio
inferior, I am
the underwriting
of myself. I cannot
wash away the dialogues
I have had with amnesia,
cannot forget
my desire to be seen.
With each alcoholic
palimpsest, I became
powder, irretrievable,
invisible
to myself. With each
reprieve, I am making
a record of what my disease
did not erase.
September rain not really falling,
but has fallen. Clouds mess
with her chance to witness
another civil
twilight. But a western gleam
signals another shift. And
she wishes she could find the hidden white
pine forest, tucked into it
creek, where she would be safe to write
his name in the needle bed
dirt without
getting found out.
But branches get so heavy
this time of year. Hotter
and hotter, later till
that moment when it gets very cool.
I carve you alive
with my own
chiseled lips. I make you
because I was made
by another
nervous dreamer.
Your brows are
what rise when I’m done
with your face.
You smile—
with your flat
stone eyes
and male mouth,
but it’s those brows
you give me
to unwrap myself with
when my own
next sitting draws near.
Water meets water,
she turns to witness
your exchange. A stick
snag mud morning
before the sun breaches
all birth of unwoven sound. She turns again
to wait
the long steel blue
wait. It’s got to be
a full moon tonight.
She will answer her own question
with another question wrapped
inside a brilliantly clean
pattern of reds, blacks, gold—
a pattern bleeding into another,
into another without end. “Will I
make it to the roadhouse
without dying tonight?” Spotting
an unraveling of the veil
of delusion, she picks beautiful silk
threads off the floor
where in desperation she knelt
to ask for help. Another weave in deep
ocean blue overlays the red,
the black, the gold. Indefinite articles
worn loosely over shoulders
could warm Caryatid to release
her boulder, to recover
her posture without a pose.
And so she does make it
to the roadhouse tonight
for a cup of hot black
light roast breathing
free—divine for now.
She wonders what song
the Sirens sang
when they lured
men to their beds
for tortured pleasure
and the prospect
of oysters
on half shells floating
in the sky at night.
She wonders if she
could hum the tune
herself (without blushing).
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 