Get this:
Chloe still likes Olivia
Chloe loves Olivia.
Chloe proposed to Olivia
right there
in the laboratory.
Chloe and Olivia
are getting married.
Everyone’s invited.
Come back, come back,
Virginia, just for this one day.
Civil Twilight or Dawn Poems
Back in the Middle
Where empty sidewalks
outnumber one way streets
you can dart across
in less than a tenth
of a New York
minute. Where no one
gives you false hope
of seeing Lombardo’s Adam
reassembled. Where
airport bathroom stalls
still have their locks
and toilet paper dispensers filled.
And the cat launches
a hunger strike
to teach you a lesson
for abandoning him
for a hundred (cat not dog)
years. And the Mississippi
isn’t a myth. Where you exhale,
slow down, unpack
your thoughts and feelings
onto the floor. And you remember
how the definition of home
floats in freshwater too.
Passive Aggressive along Snelling Avenue
The bridge is out.
You have no idea
you rejected me. No idea
there was
rejecting to do.
The bridge is out.
Can’t get there
from here—from secret
infatuation to broken
relationship blues
without an instrument—
musical, medical, or
otherwise. My umbrella turns
inside out in the wind.
Water Dancer
for Sheri
She knows every inch of the dock,
every splinter, barnacle,
hurricane-spared stilt.
It is not a plank. It’s just where she walks.
And she knows how to dive,
has been doing it for years.
No easing shore side into the wash for her,
she plunges in and is used to it
before others wake.
This is underworld—closets, caves, shelves,
trenches, forests, hydromedusa, brittle
stars, Painlevé’s camera. This is where she should live—
she who in her heart is a sponge
is a sponge is a sponge.
To lay out to dry, to become exposed
to air, the rising sun. It is her death
to be before all of you. She will never work a room,
works the ocean floor
for all it’s worth.
Metal crushes metal, emergency sirens approach closer
and closer. A muffled distortion
underwater. Leave her uncontained.
She would rather synchronize her own sculls outside a tank
than be confounded by a mirage of roses
she can’t reach without a body.
Hermit Crab
The first adaptive
reusers before
it became trendy
to convert a shoe
box into,
well, anything
besides a shoe
box. A covered bridge
into an amphitheater
for Amish punk gigs. A Dairy
Queen into a library
that houses reels
of documentary films
and mysterious microfiche. Summer
mansion into convent into
venue for flying
garters and bouquets.
Do they still do that?
No vacancy
chain. Everyone’s hoteling
it now. Or, hot desking
without reservation.
Anything to protect the soft abdomen
from invaders.
Namesake
No more illusions of steering
this dinghy ashore in the storm.
It’s going to rock; I’m going to remain
the name on its port side. It won’t fade away.
Walking the Boards
We speak in waves
over particles of breath,
briny breathing,
this boardwalk holds up
more than it will tell.
It’s the simple words
in solid greens, gray blues,
the color of sand after it rains,
it’s these that endure
in the moon’s wake. Without
a single word, we still could
talk as we walk,
tide coming in,
using the language
hidden in the dunes.
Moon at 6:28 am
A dew droplet. Bubble
in silhouette. A hole-punched
hole perforates
the sky. Remove the rusted
O and take
a look inside. If
the peephole is too
high, lower
your expectations. Low
lower slowest
way to count
clouds interfering
with a direct route
to the interior
of the other side.
Analemma
Eventually we begin
to repeat ourselves—the same three
chords, color
pattern, farewell
line in a breakup
text, taste
of ginger
on the tongue. Everything
becomes someone’s
déjà vu, even the truest
saudade expressed
on the side
of a broken
boat in a field.
Step on
my shadow, but don’t
float away
before I recall
your first private
murmurs at dusk.
Bridge Texture
The knitter in a café
whispers to herself—is it
do drop
or don’t
drop
a stitch? An allergy
to wool is not the same
as a fear
of sheep
staples. Those long blunt
needles could be
walking sticks
for gods or
batons for
conducting accidental
pauses in an unclaimed song.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 