Beware ice beneath
the door mat. She
may knock you
down with newly retrieved
self-confidence. When it’s this cold,
the surreal slips inside
cracks in doors, walls,
boots, skin. Water is
life or death—depends
on perspective. More
life, she thinks, when she keeps
her balance across thresholds.
This drive to go back to excavate
a basement after the building has been standing
graveless (shallow or deep)
for a hundred years is just the kind
of thinking that gets me
out of bed on cold winter mornings.
Without tobacco, without alcohol, this is
what’s left of my underground.
As she gathers lilies for a wicker basket
hitched to a bicycle she used
to associate with him, pebbles fall
at her feet. Comfort comes in dreams
of a familiar burden.
These small memory pieces become worry
stones she rubs to release herself
from a desire to live beneath
that boulder again. Grace comes
awkwardly to the shore.
Three thousand days, three thousand nights, hands off
bottles, a mouth that forms
new words like foreign objects
on the tongue. This counting is not done
on fingers or in the head. It springs forth
mid-tally from a soul
she can count on most days.
I challenge you
to an anthropomorphizing duel. How
do we know if the building is alive
or dead, if we have calculated our own life
cycle correctly? At dawn, our sickle-shaped
swords will whip up the air—slice
a few particles of uncertainty, strive
to kill these questions before
lunch. One of us isn’t going to make it
to the counter in time
to witness walls that talk.
What she uses to wedge
beneath one leg to level
the table could be a match
book she no longer needs. Could be
a roll of used clichés she’s been saving
to stuff in his pipe. But it’s gone—ashes
have settled to the bottom
halfway across the country. The bowl
never held much to make it worth wasting
a light on. As for the rest, she’s busy
writing it down.
Music sounds better without
the smoke. I’m the listener,
not the singer. But forgive me
if I mouth his words, even sing along,
as I walk across another skyway bridge
on my way to heightened
exhales. Hums crossing dangerously close
to humiliation—still better than
arrogantly setting
tobacco on fire again.
A nomad traveling in her own
head, she doesn’t want to settle
on one region of thought. To reject
ideas and emotions—it’s more
than that. A label stuck
to her baggage
underbelly won’t make it
through the conveyor system
to the other end. Another
home remains unclaimed.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 306 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 472 posts. There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 93kb.
The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 136 views. The most popular post that day was Rotate 180 Degrees.
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, google.com, jingleyanqiu.wordpress.com, and mail.live.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for night and day poems, night and day poem, amy nash, amy nash the rambler, and poems about night and day.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Rotate 180 Degrees December 2009
2 comments
About June 2009
9 comments
Wellington Place April 2010
20 comments
Under Influences (or Emil Nolde’s “Evening Glow”) February 2010
2 comments
Transfusion September 2010
2 comments
Varnished giclée prints drop her
onto an old farmstead’s surround
with pronounced trees
and roots. She is relieved
not to be
the only one who needs a public
place to be open today—one
besides a church,
or cineplex. She’s more interested
in tiny rebirths
than one monumental birth—those moments
that can unpack themselves
onto any given day’s matte canvas.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 