I am a page torn
but not easily removed
from the journal
you didn’t keep. I’m
a face in the crowd
you can’t look at
but recognize
with your eyes closed. I’m
the book you bought, thought
you’d devour, never read.
I’m the last word
you wish to utter.
I’m that regret.
Accidents no longer
mistakes. Nothing
about buildings or fences,
not another bridge,
a scrap of graffiti rides
out on the 11:45 train. Her net
is small, her heart large. She just wants
to take a closer look
then let you go.
A hinge creaks, the trap
door swings opens. She passes
through. It’s these details.
They weigh on her. She’s not
catatonic—she just can’t complete her day
dream. She needs to fill in
all the blanks. Where? What
begins in a coffee bar on Hennepin moves
to a Linden Hills basement
to a truck parked
on the street to a pedestrian
bridge over the river. When?
Civil twilight to midnight
with a full moon. What?
An encounter transforms
into a planned meeting
into a passionate charge
down to experience the unforgettable. Why?
Because it’s finally time.
Who? You
would like to know. If
she could just get to the kiss,
she might reveal the shadow
hands pressing against
her hips. Until then,
you can hover overhead.
Scotch on the rocks—the ice
sculpture would have lived
on for months
up here. Someone decided
it was time
to get smashed
under this loading dock
where caterers lock down.
A waking smirk paints her face
young. Her daydreams
have become pages
from old journals ripped
out, restacked, sewn
back together
in an order she believes
would have sustained
such animation. Plagiarizing is
alright as long as she
doesn’t plagiarize
herself. But it’s too much
work to steal from others. That look
is for no one—now it belongs
to these worn-down back streets.
She lives
in a land
of layers/she wants
to break
free from
cumulative
strength. Why
can’t her own
skin be enough?
Pulling them apart,
flattening
them with an old press,
she wants plains
and straightaways
to be enough
poetry to land on.
To fall down
the rabbit hole
of regret is
to roll in Georgia red
clay mud without
remembering
it was once dirt.
It will be
again. To sidestep
and walk quickly by
is to begin to accept
rain without pretending
you can predict the depth
of its source.
A tiny stuffed brown
bear in the snow
in the city, she rescues it
because
even inanimate ones need
shelter. Or, because
she can’t erase the concrete
image of careless
disregard, active
rejection. She wants to build
a story from repurposed pieces
of lives she’ll never know.
She’s willing
to make it up.
She accepts her shortcomings
with plot, character,
continuity, a driving force.
She believes the tiny blue
eyes and red inverted umbrella
mouth stitched in
will be enough
of a lyric to loop
into a rhythm of how things
get dropped, picked up, and
passed along—or pocketed
for later use.
Cover the Murmur
railroad trestle in snow, it is still
going to be there. Look up
my sleeves—nothing
hidden but a dusting
of time on my forearm,
a ring of vinyl never played
around my wrist. That I like the old
photographs printed and mounted
over song is a symptom
not the disease, and one
of the best ones I’ve got.
She thinks she hears
a confident blues
guitar play across
the alley. Or,
she may have just read
a caption to a movie—
it’s come down to subtitling
her own language again.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 