PUBLICATION READING
SubText Bookstore, 165 Western Avenue No., St. Paul, MN
7 PM., Saturday, November 9th, 2013
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Poetry, essays about Home
Featured readers include Jill Breckenridge, Tami Mohamed Brown, Wendy Brown-Baez, James Cihlar, Alice Owen Duggan, Margaret Hasse, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Linda Kantner, Julie Landsman, Amy Nash, Ellen Shriner, Cary Waterman, Karen Herseth Wee, Miriam Weinstein
She remembers
birthdays upon
birthdays but not
what day it is. Faces
upon faces
but not
names. Mile splits
into splits into
splits but not
the distance
between heart
beats—just let it
not be
a straight line.
No more
invasive myths
about what can be seen
beneath the meniscus without
a mask.
A subtitle is not
subtext is not
the answer
to any question. A name
emerges from an ash
pile, a bundle
of freshly snapped
branches, a line
from a song
her mother loved. What she loves
to hum in the back
seat of an old wood-paneled
station wagon has no
title, no hidden
meaning. Just a mix of raw
notes and floating
words only a young
imagination could concoct.
Because she projects
the business
of living gets tangled
up. An obsession
with her own
shadow keeps
the door
to yesterday
locked shut. Is she
in or out? Here
or there? Left
or right? Plus
and minus,
she can’t call
time out.
She doesn’t even feel it—
that bee or wasp or hornet
sting—till after she stops
running along
another urban trail. Before
the thunder
they promised. The last
of last season’s
stingers still hanging
on. When shower water
activates a sharp ping
of pain she doesn’t begrudge
the culprit. Endangered
and fading fast
is no way to live.
A stranger bows before her
legs with some declaration
she doesn’t hear. Headphones
plugging her into
the third Rolling
Stones song
in a row. Exactly 23
years since that fire
left her homeless
in New Haven. Exactly two
more months
till 50
becomes her new
home. Will it be
the last
compliment for her
she doesn’t hear?
Blood absorbed
in the sand
could be
the first
stain of human
contact she can
bear to see. Running
into the open,
circumnavigating
an oval,
she realizes
she could
make room
to go
side by side.
If she dreams
of a stranger,
does he become
more than someone
she nods at
on an El train
before noon?
The Loop
is stranger
than she remembered
last time—that heat
wave in October.
A loner
at peace. Bruises
she conceals
from herself
only ache
when she lies.
What if
one of those 10,000
got lost—would it turn
up across town
tucked between
the circular one
and that snake? What drains
her tonight
will relieve
her some morning
down the road—a mysteriously
winding one. Could have been
stolen, could be returned
before dawn.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 