Subversive gardening, I am
an urban vine unwilling
to be tethered to one person’s possession.
I will not become
part of anyone’s landscape
of ownership dispute. I will
grow as my environment allows. I will
become a grubby urban palimpsest
to be layered upon by a future you and me.
Note: John Ashbery refers to grubby urban palimpsests in his book Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987, ed. David Bergman (Knopf, 1989).
as if he could give
you what remains
of daylight. Shadow kisses
across your cold cheek. Relief
from rush hour chaos—a simple word breaking
off your mouth. Energy
from ten cups of black coffee, ten cans of Red
Bull not needed here. As if
this recognition could be
on your face.
Sailboats on ice, lake ghosts
cut a V-shaped point
of view. Old boat works to come
down. Or could be collapsible
corrugated metal to be
reassembled further along
shore. Not sure about apparitions,
she knows addiction
costs. Can’t be repurposed. No matter
how many times he drew life from the lake,
it won’t help him now.
I want to climb into your chute and go
where you’ll take me. Part of the longest continuous network
anywhere, you’ve lost
something. A building? Parking ramp? Human
contact? Asymmetry
is an addiction. Skyway to nowhere,
feed me.
No time to mourn, to encounter
rubble in a hole
before retail monster walls
rise above. Dismantling
December air, live
instruments and raw
voices not welcome
in this symmetrical disaster.
Uptown bans all scars.
Turn a soccer ball inside
out. Make a purse. Hang acetate
images of typewriters
from your ears. See the man
(the top of his head cropped
off) with a smoke
dangling
from his mouth in a print
on that wall in this café
where you can
no longer smoke. Make
a clutch with your lips. Try
not to cry out
those same old words. I’ve tried
this before—difficult but
not impossible to take shape
in warmed hands.
A florist indulges
in soliloquy. I pass
by without knowing
the hours. It takes a skyway
to access
desperation this whorled.
I.
You are the axes, bowtie, pivotal moment
we all pass through to get to the other side
of our lives. This time
I’m emerging from Penn Station, heading your way
along freshly rained-on sidewalks—the tourist
thicket watered well. Your required spectaculars
advertise everything but
this love story I have left
to tell. Will he be jealous? I wish
I could tell him I cry
whenever I see his face. But I don’t. I do
when the Friday afternoon slow river rushing crowd drags me in. I am
so in love. Would he be jealous yet? I check
the Chevrolet clock. Into the transverse LED net—Broadway,
42nd Street, 7th Avenue—I become an endangered species
in an island sanctuary, practicing the art of intentional
walking. Always a little subversive on these streets. I am so
in love. Beyond you, west along 46th Street, through scaffold mist, my love is
Paramount.
II.
The hotel looks the same.
Stainless steel, concrete, a hundred shades of horizontal
gray to subvert the vertical noise outside. Rose
heads protrude from wall surfaces without newscrawlers. Fog and January humidity
get smuggled in waves through the heavy swinging lobby doors. A blue floor light
guides the small hot elevator as it rises 14 floors. The same
floor-length mirror and barley twist
rail greet me as the doors open. Room 1508—another small one,
the bathroom sink a metal funnel that drains the tear I give away
as quietly as the shift in my mouth’s shape. Down
in the Library Bar, I don’t drink
all those glasses of Shiraz. I drink black coffee for free and know better
than to wait for him to arrive. Would he be jealous yet? An emotion
he hides so well. I can only manage to say it once—in reverse. There is no story,
no plot ready for neon streaming, only enough character to walk across
the Shuffle in well-worn heels. It’s all I have to show for
you—how I learned to recognize my love of place,
over person or thing, with no jealousy left to pass through to get to the other side.
That these ruled
lines offend
her is a symptom,
hers, of obsession.
She needs to draw
stick figures
unencumbered by wires
and shortest distances, tight
ropes and narrative’s longhand
script. She knows
they’ll walk out
on clouds of snow-
covered mystery, but
at least she can pretend
she set them free.
Better to call it rose, not
pink. Better to leave off
the accent. Those bricks don’t
match. The lining up
gets lost. Everything has a seam
in it. I’m not
blushing anymore—there’s mine.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 