I come to the swamp ready to disappear
into the primordial forest amidst cedars that stand
a distance from those dunes where I stood
above it all, eyeing a boardwalk that floats
on a salt marsh at high tide. Pause
and recall a time when I still believed
in the power of moving bodies to speak
out loud beneath the eaves as rain pounds
on the roof. A gray cottage he owned,
or, his family did. The space heater vibrated
all night. We shared peppermints after we ran
along those dunes before the perfect storm surged.
Author: Arambler
Her Duende and Guardian Angel Meet in an Alley
the day after Christmas.
Both wear black skullcaps
and matching hooded trench coats.
It’s hard to tell them apart
till they turn to face her window
two floors above.
The commotion is real.
The fear too. Why would anyone
pretend to be terrified?
Why wouldn’t they be identical
to her own desire
to become more than this
voyeur who hides
behind a partially closed blind
sipping skullcap tea
in a hooded cloak of her own?
Someone set fire to
the recycling bin,
or planted an explosive inside.
She didn’t hear it,
or smell it, or stop it
from overpowering daylit thoughts.
Castaway items have spilled out
the angry burn hole on the side:
scraps of used notebook pages,
empty yogurt containers,
a black suede, lace-up pump,
three copies of a pressure cooker
owner’s manual, not
a glass bottle in sight.
As they turn away, one of them
(she can no longer tell which)
begins to fold
sections of the Sunday paper
into human forms. Not flattened paper dolls holding hands.
Two independent ones
staring back
at her in 3D.
Only one of them
would dare do such a thing
before civil twilight.
This Floating Loop
I am a red buoy, anchored and swaying—
fettered to dark waters of dizzying thought.
You are another buoy, untethered and green,
who comes to me in a chimed dream.
There is a third buoy that has no color
I can identify—its invisibility
buoys me up
to face another mineswept day.
Instead of buoy, I should have picked moxie
or menacing or Spanish moss.
She Would Swim in the Aral Sea
how many times can she quit
her life during a blackout
and come to high
on the branch of a sycamore tree
how many times must she whisper
mirror mirror on the floor
were you ever in the hand
on / off the wall / off / on
the ceiling / tell me
a true story
how you ended up there
how I ended up here / looking
down where my feet dominate
not the eyes / rarely the mind
sometimes the knees / I ask
a stranger / you are
no longer a stranger
we’re all strangers
to our futures
reinventing the fairy tales
that have kept us
trapped between panes
of glass / untranslated water
lips of blood / dried-up seas
she can still taste
the metallic / irony
on her tongue from the old type
foundry matrix
she remembers hearing
the steamship whistle break
the news as the ferry left
the strange comfort
of its berth
recalls wanting it to be
the Uncatena or Nobska
or the one she knew best
the Islander
recollects knowing
her wish will not be fulfilled
dreams of another uncharted journey
to the Staten Island boat graveyard
where she might pay her respects
to leftover scraps
of the work horse
that shuttled her
between all those places
that might be stitched together
to construct a make believe
childhood home
along with the other tugboat
and barge remains
that keep so many secrets
sealed in the muck
The Unlicensed Mocks Car Model Fails with American Sentences
The new nanny is no lady who sings opera, but loves fish that scat.
No bimbo, she wears a sandal on her left foot to probe the wizard.
To the naked eye, a sea otter pup will dunk the lettuce head first.
That’s not all there is to the story—just another memory dump.
Before Broken Byssal Threads
It was collecting shells:
smooth ones, flat ones, ridged ones,
some with tiny spiral slides inside.
Yellow, chalky white,
that deep bruise
of the mussel
that can only mean
sandpipers stand
on one leg nearby.
Seaglass distracts
only briefly.
Every ocean I hear
unfurls from those years
I lived only
in the littoral zone.
No, It’s Mine: The 13th Stanza
Syllables smash against
the whitewashed concrete floor below.
Now all I can hear is the sound
of someone else’s ocean
in a conch shell I find buried
beneath a cedar shingle shack,
destroyed by fire. It is no accident.
The day my father dies,
I do not recognize my own name.
Letters taste foreign
as rusted hinges
and shallow pools
of savory brine.
Advent of Another December
Tomorrow our month begins
without you, Dad,
to cheer us on,
without the lights
that open windows
to a calendar—the one
that takes me back
to a scene in New Hope, PA,
where you treated us
to a day by ourselves
with you about to be 39,
me about to be 13
(exactly a third your age,
the way we like our math),
and you bought me that teal silk
(never wool for you or me)
sweater, and I felt so grown up,
and you were weeks away
from your jumping off place,
me from my first kiss.
Super Elliptical
cloudy water from a tap
clears bottom up
a plastic cup exposes
the mood I’m in / in
reverse or nothing at all
Moleskine gives me random-sized
rectangular stickers
in random shades of red
a square is a rectangle
with OCD / meticulously detailed
leftover maps
guide me through
every maze you drop me into / you
and your drawn-on
poker face / distilled
catenary arch kilns
nothing is pure
those stickers have rounded
corners when peeled off
what remains
is an outline
of a November day
threatened by rain
West 15th Street
not Chelsea or Tremont
Coney Island or Ocean City
not Allentown or Arlington Heights
West 15th Street in Loring Park
where a 19th-century row house
anchors the south side
where to the north
within the city’s oldest park
the geese and ducks
and turtles and black and albino
squirrels and pollinating bees
and butterflies in summer are
where you and I lived out
most of your life indoors
with catnip cardboard workouts
and otterbed dreams
wherever you were
was home
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 