Amy Nash will be reading her poetry at the Fireroast Mountain Cafe in South Minneapolis on Saturday, April 3rd, at 7 pm. The address and website are:
Fireroast Mountain Cafe
3800 37th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55406
www.fireroastmountaincafe.com
Counts backwards
till she can’t breathe. She pretends
a message will appear
at zero
on a screen addressed to her
from you. A different kind
of marring,
you’ll be asking for it.
Hard on the lips,
her pressure increases
as your resistance
goes down. Exaltation.
No photos ever of me
in Brooklyn. Some in Queens—
an Astoria fourplex with unfinished
hardwood floors. Manhattan all over beginning
inside the helm of the Flat Iron.
The Bronx north of 232nd Street indoors
and out. Even one on Staten Island before
dashing across the Verrazano Narrows
Bridge. Where did they go? I know
they were taken
by the tiny broken locks
in my soul.
But I can’t end
on that—I’ll be the one
stealing, not having earned
the right to mention it—
the soul that is.
I will be reading some of my poetry at the Fireroast Mountain Cafe in South Minneapolis on Saturday, April 3rd, at 7 pm. For directions, check out their website: http://www.fireroastmountaincafe.com/
She thinks she hears
a confident blues
guitar play across
the alley. Or,
she may have just read
a caption to a movie—
it’s come down to subtitling
her own language again.
Without sound, how
do I know
what you mean
when you write
the letter K, when
you sign off with a see
you later? How
much later? I can’t see
your face—but you
never did give away much
with your eyes. Only
the tone holding
up or forcing down
the timbre in your voice
could begin to reveal
what I wish to know.
She isn’t going to tell
you or your brother
what she’s doing
with your other brother.
She doesn’t want
to know what you think
of her sister, or
what you plan to do
with her cousin.
She’s writing a book
without faces, without
links to anything
save
the fence she hopes
to break through.
An incurable addiction
to the image
that comes on strong,
without warning—blue
bottles emptied of their rose
water gather light
upon a sill. A vine
still holding its dried leaves
tight clings to the window
in the dead
of winter not so dead. Stacks
of CDs cover the clear plastic
lid over a turntable. Everything
collects dust when ignored—especially
the soul.
If she were shooting
photos day
by day, she would look
for you in two-way skyway
motion, would need to
actually see you, then find
a way to take your image
without being exposed.
Impossible. You’re nowhere
near here. Not yet. Not ever
going to take cover
on this second floor winter
salvation. No, she has it
too easy—
this corner table, this pen,
that imagination, the taking
a network of secret lines.
To be in motion and
at rest over ice, to walk
and talk of the prime
mover and still not believe is
to be without
property, untaxed, free to choose
temperance or the end
of grace in fits and starts.
