Maybe I don’t want to wait
for you to resurface.
One dive off
a broken pier
is enough
warning. Murky water
won’t tell on you
the way she did. She didn’t
hold back—mirrors,
selfies, Instagram, cruel
works. I don’t want to
wait. Won’t say a word.
This instrumental
will be
the lost anchor.
Piano is levitas;
Kahn is gravitas.
We all play roulette
sometimes without knowing it. Feudal
play is
a chain mail wall
that responds
to touch. The curve
traced by a point
on the rim
of a wheel
as it rolls along
a straight line
without slipping. Slipping
is not required. When
does a slip become
a relapse? You are the most
imperfect auditorium
absorbing and reflecting
the sound of my mind
as it hovers over deep sleep.
In the left margin,
fish scales climb
or descend.
When you write
yourself out
of the story, it becomes futile
to try to sneak back in. The acoustics
in the church
where we held my father’s funeral
captured too much
bounce and echo. No one
understood a word
we were saying. Is
an omniscient narrator
a better bouncer
than an intrusive one?
Who is more reliable?
What about the polyphonic?
I remember
writing the Ecstatic
Uptown Chronicles
in fragments with you
over drinks (and drugs)
one winter. The first
one. I was lost. I was found.
I was a wretch—so were you.
It was
exquisite—
that corpse
of a song
we couldn’t resuscitate.
Pulling glass
from his skull,
he stands
a chance
of relocating
his compass
without
a GPS.
I am
so invisible
I am
free to
If voices are hereditary,
I sing like
the dead.
The first
bridge I fell
in love with
was over
troubled water.
No more art
in the schools,
we make it here
from glitter and bat shit. Crazy
how guano
fertilizes the most
unlikely plots.
A chicken shits
on a construction paper
bingo board. You pin it
to the wall
next to the velvet
painting of a cowboy
and call it
No time to fix
errant capitalization.
I remember
first encountering
Frank Lloyd Wright
while dancing
on that bridge
over troubled water.
Architects may come
architects may
All the news
I need
is in the weather
report that is
fit to print. I am
the only living boy
in New York. I miss both—
the boy and the City.
She has one eye
looking due east,
the other northwest.
She says she can
sew him back together
if you want. Do you
want? We all want
to go
where there’s
no sound
some nights,
don’t we?
For a little over a year, I crossed
the river twice
a day. East to west. West to east. Or,
more precisely
northeast to southwest—
you get the idea.
When I say
The River
with a capital T, capital R,
I believe you know
which one. When I say
The City, capital
T, capital C,
you know.
Thousands of miles
east. Those daily
crossings were loaded
with a weight of sadness
I denied. A denial
I refused to skip
across the surface
of the water
because I never learned
how. People tried
to teach me. I couldn’t get
the hang of it. Never trusted
myself with a flat, cold
stone in my hand.
The way I don’t trust
myself behind the wheel. So by bus,
by bike, or by foot
I would make it
to the other side. Was I
safe? Did I know my world
would become
visibly cracked, thickened,
unskippable soon?
And The City
its own poem
packed with shimmering
smooth surprise
to be opened gently
as a paper fan.
you are my people
in this room
strangers all of you
relief in our eyes
in this room
for an hour
egos to be checked
at the door
name tags break
anonymity our
introductions don’t
no one’s reading them
in this room
cocktail parties
get going in the ones
on either side
we all have one of two
(or both) last names
beginning with “a”
our noms de bouteille
Oh, the stress
of being on display,
of going
to the mall
and having to stay
there. Where? Of
America. Oh,
the survival stories
to tell. If
we do that sort
of thing. Tanked. Touch
me. I’m not ready
to be touched.
Deep beneath rhythm’s
crust, a bubble of sound
bursts open. A slow seep
to the surface then a widening
slick spreads across the lake.
Without a bridge,
the song finds its own
shape—becomes
its own Helicon mystery.
He hides his words
inside a Mason jar. Thinks
no one will see him
peel them off
his tongue with sugar-tongs,
slip them in, screw it
shut. Nothing to do
with lisps, though he had one.
Outgrew it the way
he outgrows you
and your sea glass
smooth voice. No air
in or out. His own breathing
drained of sound
the way an alarm
clock inside
a sealed bell jar
won’t wake you up.
Sitting in a roadside cafe waiting
for the other
shoe to drop. My older sisters
tossed their sneakers
(probably red)
out the station wagon window.
Rumor was they blamed me
when our mother found out.
I was under one. Both my sisters
are older. I don’t always achieve
economy
of words.
Usually know where
the action lies. Avoid
the passive
voice. Most of the time.
It can be heard
from the other side
of the highway. A distant sound
to be avoided
by truckers and young women
on the loose. Facts lie more often
in spring. Be careful. The other
shoe might become
a lady’s slipper.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 