No position to be in, vertebrate
lips stick together standing
up. Does the female possess
the male, or does he just swim
upside down? That damned secretion is used
for balance. Incapable of flight—
two hundred eggs still
to be transferred. If only
propulsion ended here.
(found poem from Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painlevé, edited by Andy Masaki Bellows and Marina McDougall with Brigitte Berg)
To be
multimodal
in two years is to be
a ride down can’t get there from here
derailed.
Another bundle up surprise
to dodge the moaning
bulk of one sanitation
truck in fall snow sputter
and mount is too soon, is to
become extinct not soon enough.
All the beautiful
moments have been taken.
What’s left
in my releasing
hands is this—
truthful seep into the less
elastic skin of memory.
Song crosses a bridge
wood-cut, film is
cabin built and framed
inside a postage stamp
she would be afraid to use
unless she were to write
you a letter for
wallpapering another dead
letter office. We all live
there at some point
on the span we cross,
oblivious and blinded by the crashing
irony of an ocean
called peace.
She never takes room—a spillover
lover from his last book
of bed times
and sleeping porches
in a town so much
warmer than here. Where
he would say fuck out
loud, she would be a collapsed
chorus of giggles:
Who is this
who makes me fall
down so easily into
spasms without withdrawal,
not even from a drop
of espresso
that woman splattered
on her way out the door? But
he sings it instead, and that
just makes her stand steady for more.
Frost on the empty
bottle in a dying
flower
bed, I don’t know what to make
of this month’s crisp cache.
A locked black metal trunk affixed
to a downtown
bus shelter’s glass
backing holds those same
secrets—no public access, and I’m not
ready to go so private without
you, crawling along, ready
to wrap my swollen feet
in your final scroll.
A gloat and a gleam
you can’t see through
an old phone mouth
piece. Our imagination collective
could be oval shaped
and who would know. Come
sit beside me in this
potted plant meltdown
we’ve created without
the use of virtual
eyes or ears. Our strut
could be next up.
“There’s the present moment fraught with tangled woods.”
—Jack Kerouac, from Big Sur
The doctor who’s not really
a doctor
yet asks her to find her
safe place with eyes closed, to lie
on her back, see
nothing but that brown orange
noise of inner eye
lids till it comes
into focus—the edge
of a field blurred into a pine forest so ripe
with needle
bed mint sweetness.
All kisses before it got so complicated
and the sun peeking through just
to wave hello
and see you later when you get up
from your daydream—
I mean hers.
It was her death to be
so awake before all of you without
a cleared path
to escape along. It is about
feet first, it turns out.
Overheard. I don’t need a sitting
room, I need
a universal
room where you can go
to burn
off surprise. And kindling
would be so because
these are ginkgo leaves
and this is October
and that is snow.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 