Hands over hands—a grip.
Kiss the knuckles to grasp
the meaning of love
without words.
Civil Twilight or Dawn Poems
Taking the Cure from the Pennsylvania Wood
She cannot resist the slate
surface of your skin strengthening
the faith in hers. The floor reverberates
with the heartbeat of a hummingbird
she sees in the corner
of the sky she forgot to touch.
The scent of rain falling on slate
draws her to you. In her faltering, she believes
the echoes will never smell
this sweet again. She cannot see
the hummingbird but knows she heard
its hunger spill over the deck. Recycled
boards stack up to the ceiling,
broken open
by diamond-shaped clerestory windows.
She’s not cheating,
she’s using her resources. The black stone
path of possibility shrinks at the edge
of her thought. Purple gems block the gray
light. You are free to live
with her beside the ocean now
that the sun has settled down. And the wind will smash
the glass panes into fragments
of salted lies—a beautiful disaster.
Freight Lined
From stifling coolness
within a parking garage,
from the graphite transfer sound
of a freight elevator shifting floors,
from the deliberate stride
of his black work boots—echo
his escape, his eyes,
three lines.
He motions the wall to tumble,
telephone wires to tense outside
a window, a barricade
withdrawn. He can no longer conceal,
wills stasis to crumble
into being, the outsized beauty
of his surround
crates toward a red bird sky.
Adaptive Reuser
Positioned on a bald hilltop, this old
building calls itself
precious. Everyone she knows
is too afraid
to touch it. She’s positioned
aloft, precious
over the river—everyone is too afraid
to touch her. Water moves
only over falls. Winter has slammed
against all she sees
below. When healing does push thaw
forward, she will not be afraid
to put her whole hand in muddy water
to wash away the strange
curse crushed inside stone facades.
The Metronome
is a toy
to her—a triangular wooden box
with a secret hidden
behind a panel
her mother keeps
her heart beating to.
She wants to know
the secret but doesn’t want to learn
it wrong. So she watches
her mother count
to herself as her fingers
and feet
spell out the contents
of the secret
on piano keys,
organ stops and pedals.
She will develop a habit
of watching metronomers, believing them
to be minor deities (sometimes even full-fledged gods).
Like a good daughter, she stands in front, giving away all
of her attention.
She dances with rhythmic abandon
to pull down a god
or two. Her mother would say she has lost
her balance along the way. And when her mother disowns her,
she won’t realize it
till she chooses to be the meter ticking,
swinging out her own story.
Gigantic Perspective
Skyways run between second
floors in an irregular pattern
she forgets to decode.
But she believes she must
duck
when approaching beneath—
her pedestrian movements
can be so erratic, better
not to risk it.
Talking to the Streets
To avoid loose
structure, she steps around
the porous stretches
of your concrete skin.
Call it superstition—don’t
step on the crack in any sidewalk.
She calls it the wise
way to construct
a commitment from you
in a faithless world. If
she believes you can
hold her up, will she believe
you will? Strike out
the ending and the sag
in the middle, she seeks
a taut you, abhors
the tremulous, falls asleep
to the vibrations rising
through the grate,
a compressed force
she would not dare deny.
Gargoyle or Caryatid
Crouched above
you, she holds
everything against
the mantle and flicks
lit matches,
narrowly escaping
your exposed
proud flesh. I could be
her before another
renovation after rain.
Redbird Reef
Coming out of retirement to awaken deep
sleepers is one
person’s garbage becoming another
person’s treasure. Blue
mussels and sponges,
black sea bass and mackerel, marine spoils
over a grave of a displaced
life. I cannot count
the number of hours spent riding
Redbirds—the #1, “Last
stop, 242nd Street, Van Cortlandt Park!”
But it’s a lie—it’s a loop,
a ghost of one beneath
City Hall. I can feed off
this ring. I do eat fish.
Preparing for the Change
September rain not really falling,
but has fallen. Clouds mess
with her chance to witness
another civil
twilight. But a western gleam
signals another shift. And
she wishes she could find the hidden white
pine forest, tucked into it
creek, where she would be safe to write
his name in the needle bed
dirt without
getting found out.
But branches get so heavy
this time of year. Hotter
and hotter, later till
that moment when it gets very cool.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 