Amy Nash will be participating in a poetry reading Saturday, November 9th, at SubText Bookstore in Saint Paul

home-anthology-new

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

Flatter

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.

Tailgate

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.

Now Won

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.

Stagger

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.

October 8

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?

Arena Solo

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.

24 Hours in Chicago

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.

Lake Effect

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.