Mixed bouquets from a private garden sold
at a farmer’s market stall
Thursdays on the mall—one secured
with elastic and string
to the bridge’s southeast rail
and a note. I can’t make
out any words
save you and peace. His name still
withheld. It’s not
the impact
on water through air once
met metal
ledge, but the force
of those falls against
sad flesh crushing bone.
Evergreens smelling of the soft
side of an island
catch me sideways
and straight on—I never met
a tree I didn’t like.
I can cough away fright
as long as I remember
what I said about trees.
And the whys of this are tonics
I no longer wish
to mix. I taste,
for the first time
without guilt, the knots
and sighs of pine.
Are you Flaubert’s least
untrue, she won’t dare
ask for fear
your reply might smack
her cheek, lick her lip,
keep her
reaching for more
paint and wall.
I carve you alive
with my own
chiseled lips. I make you
because I was made
by another
nervous dreamer.
Your brows are
what rise when I’m done
with your face.
You smile—
with your flat
stone eyes
and male mouth,
but it’s those brows
you give me
to unwrap myself with
when my own
next sitting draws near.
As old as me—water
held to rise
level to the north, water
rushes out
level to the south.
The only true falls
the entire length of this mighty river.
I could be the lock master
in another life. Mitre-shaped,
the gates won’t open
till equilibrium returns. I wish
mine worked so well
after all these years.
She seeks a childhood face
along the East Bank, diverted and spilled onto
an empty road, old railroad
tracks framing its riverside.
That this widening band of water flowing south
could be the same river
as the tiny channel
she waded through yesterday up north,
that this unsalted navigational pulse
could reckon with her North Atlantic bias
could all be a signal
calling her to pause here
behind a brick building in an old rail yard
(only a slice of river visible) to see how
no other word, even in this midst,
besides saudade will do.
Still pretending
to be a guest
in her own city, she reads a tourist
brochure pretending
it is a magazine.
She squints to see
how out of focus
home can become. An entire page
devoted to gentlemen’s clubs.
She doesn’t work it
so much less so each year
as she passes from eligible, young desirable
to this: a visitor
wise enough to know
when to refocus, when
what fades is what goes
on display, passing through
on out. Every town’s got to have a place
to see naked girls
going out of focus
in the dark. Still, she imagines living
in a hotel, turns the page, what else
have you got, city?
I am her
royal highness perched low
on the Minnesota River’s north
bank. A beer cooler
my throne, a grain
elevator screeching
over the mucky muck
water cheers me on. My fishermen
hook big
flapping bottom
feeders, then hand me
one of their poles, and I bend
to pull the line
taut, lower, repeat,
the rod steadied against my royal blue
bibbed breasts. This battle becomes
the day’s drama—
it against me, the queen
23 times its size. Finally,
when I do pull it ashore,
a blotch of red in its gill,
one of my fishermen attends
to its release, the needle
nose pliers freeing it
unharmed—give or take
a lifetime of post
traumatic stress
disordering its course. I am
the carp queen sculling
the air with a regal wave
to the boys on a barge
passing before us on this sweaty river.
I hear their megaphone
pleas for me
to flee my banked fleet. But
even as I flirt
with those towing
cargo (be it soybean
or grain or freeze dried
myths) to the Mississippi River
bound for Red Wing, Rock
Island, Saint Louis, Ripley,
Natchez, New Orleans, somewhere
in between, my heart belongs
to these charming men seeking
the biggest carp, the better quip
to pass another Saturday
too hot for its own Minnesota
not so nice. They remind me. Her highness
is not so high
left alone on her portable perch, potable contents
sealed tight inside for now. Her highness
is referring to herself
in the third person again.
For MJ
A duck nest beside an unpumped pool,
debris-laden, a feathered inn.
A feline banquet surrounds the swill,
the outdoor plumber’s late again.
An expansive tarp buckles in the mix,
ducklings gone from view, a child slips.
Three sisters twist their braids into rope,
shaking debris from the little one’s throat,
survivors are taking their first flight.
Suffering gratitude is a burden
she will carry from the well
to the fire in a vessel
upon her shoulders—
understanding spilling
like new wine speaking
in tongues to the warmed earth.
She endures the gift exchange
of her clan, a ruby-colored cloth
passed between women till one declares
it will be torn
into a deck of cards
made of erotic fiber.
Small swatches for young men
to pick from, each choosing
randomly until one last piece
is left for the one who has waited
to learn love
with the woman who witnesses
an exquisite act of destruction
in every gift there is.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 