come meet your poet
who rewrites you
each night
after the local news
let’s the new version cure
for 24 hours
or millennia
no slow death before noon
no archangels
that trumpet rhymes
they serve coffee in stained
glass ruby goblets
no handles
the world goes Manx
for a day
or three hundred
ways to skin
your knee
in a gravel pit
the poem
not the poet
controls the moon
the tides
and women
that’s another story
a wooden window frame
cracked at the bottom
three biodegradable boxes
of soup still sealed shut
a broken electric shock
handshake toy
set to repeat twenty times
at eight-second intervals
still broken
nine wiffle balls
painted blue
four tiny bottles
of grape colored nail polish
without brushes
five Paul Newman
Forever stamps
a mirror image of myself
getting lost
on a dirt road
“Words are impoverishments, splendid poverties.”
—Charles Simic (from “Reading Philosophy at Night,” The Life of Images)
Melancholy settles in.
All room surfaces
get ghosted
back to silence.
Then she realizes
she gets to keep the poems
she writes. Their letters
won’t vaporize so quickly.
Discovers an exit
where she enters
a tall stone-clad tower.
She climbs its angled, wide stairs.
Reads names of towns
on the walls
as she gets higher
and higher. To the top. (baby)
Kind of like a lighthouse
shoved inland,
saving nothing,
where a dollhouse waits
below to be touched.
A jarring memory
of a napkin
from 45 years ago:
As she folds it
into a triangle
in that breakfast nook
in Indiana,
she tells herself
never forget
this moment.
Her father fries eggs, butters toast.
Bald, gray rectangles outside
expose a dry cold.
“It’s kind of like Houdini in reverse. Instead of trying to escape, you’re trying to be let in.”
—Tom Waits
Let words cure overnight. Beware
stale napkins that crumble
to a fine white powder
when you grab one off the stack
to wipe your face, blow your nose. Beware.
For a music lover,
you sure have bad timing.
Hurry hurry hurry.
How many days
will you wait? Hurry hurry hurry.
Sad funny lovers with bad livers
that give out too soon.
After all these years,
you still know what it means
to watch a video
filmed inside a liquor store
with your eyes closed.
You view coffee bean roasters
with your ears. A background hum
helps you count
those one seconds
at a time with wired precision.
The one who died
almost five years ago
used to wait for them
to unlock the door
at 9 am every day but
Sunday. What did he do on Sundays
when he couldn’t drive
to Wisconsin anymore?
He never drank
coffee. Yoo-hoo instead. Ensure
and vodka at the very end.
Houdini didn’t drink.
If he had decided to dive backwards
into a fish tank, he might have
never left. You used to squeeze yourself
through milk chutes
till you realized
you didn’t want
in. Outside
you remember that Indiana sky.
Sunset or sunrise,
the horizon holds corn
between its teeth.
No other silhouette will do.
“The left hand is thousands of years older
than the right, that’s why most people
still don’t know how to use it.”
—Dean Young (from “Dragonfly”)
You hold a number,
no, a number sign, no,
a hash, no, hashtag
in your left hand.
Ready to fling it
over the chainlink fence.
You hope it won’t behave
like a boomerang,
like an old lover
who returns
one too many times
without an alibi or straight line.
Each prong
has a parallel mate
no matter how
you flip it. Four simple lines
become a safety net
to catch you
when you leap.
A perch is a perch
is a lover
of freshwater
gasps. You hope
the neighboring bracket
pair makes a better
flotation device than hugger.
Gloom. Bathos. I don’t want to be
that girl. I remember when
being that girl
meant flying a kite in Central Park.
Winking at a department store mannequin.
Seeing it wink back.
Biting a white glove. I let go
of all the strings
I’m holding. The wind died
hours ago. I wave my empty hands
through still warm air.
Another season blurs
its edges into the next.
I don’t drown.
I am the matchbook
you shove
under a wooden leg
to level the table
you use
as an idea factory.
I get down
on all fours
to prop up
a mirror that magnifies you
two times larger
than you were yesterday.
I have a delicious power
you wish
to taste.
Stick out your tongue
and say
anything you want.
What you thought
would be sweet
turns out to be
hot and spicy,
slightly bitter
around the edge.
No rasp can touch
these legs
I use to run
through reflecting pools
and invisible waterfalls
in the dark.
The last time
I took mushrooms
I got stuck
under the East River
in a subway car
for more than a half
century tucked into
an hour. More than
just another bad trip.
I wish I’d been alone
with only strangers
down there. Regrets.
I claim to have none.
Then another ex-lover
reel plays
in a too well-lighted room.
No blinds, shades, curtains,
not even a ratty sheet
to use
to cover those outsized
windows. I can’t tell the difference
between fresh and salt
water thoughts
from this view. An angry sun
leads to the worst
bouts of shame. When it’s over,
I always feel a little
embarrassed that I let it
get that far. That I’ve gotten
on the wrong train.
Can’t really blame the guy.
Not the subway, city
dwellers, or even the chemicals.
It’s never the river’s fault
especially when the river
is really a strait.
Wait for me inside
the vestibule
of my inner ear.
You’ll make me dizzy.
I don’t mind.
It’s not you.
It’s that damn dimple.
The one that appears
on your left cheek
when you give me
that crooked smile.
I thought it signaled
your love.
Peel off
the red
raincoat. Turn
it inside out.
We all make each other
sick some
of the time
remaining in
the glass.
Nausea dissipates
when I walk it off.
When I snap
my fingers and forget
to hold my breath.
Hit by a wake
of rainwater
a morning bus makes
as it barrels through
every puddle. Hit
by a gray thought—
losers, only losers. Hit
by a Dumptruck
song she hasn’t heard
in years. The Haunt.
Hit by all the names
she never remembers,
she hits back. The sound
of vulcanized rubber
on wet pavement
becomes her
secret overture.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 