Realizing with relief
she can’t hug
a voice, she is safe
from self-harm.
Day Poems
Heights (Day 2,304)
And I know I will
die. It could be now. How
will I lift this foot?
And I don’t, and I do.
Stairs to an elevated pedestrian
bridge over nine lanes
of highway. The linking flight
between two floors
within an office, a red
ladder against that brick
wall. A green one
in a park that’s crumbling
faster than I can reach
the landing—any one over
water or a creek’s dry
well. I’ll never be
a man on a wire,
a woman ready
to run for help
when he falls.
It’s a healthy one—this fear.
Washington Avenue South
Before the street made sense, became a boulevard
with flower beds and urban strength
trees, she entered
the roadhouse to seep
into wood. To be
the end. It is
gone. She is
not. Up the long block—a lengthening
stretch of cars, do not
honk, go fast, poets cling
to their voices under beams
compressing breath and scars.
Mount
Glass poems collect
dust in a case
that used to hold
taxidermy fodder.
It could be her head
(not the stuffed bird’s) this time
that flies off—this night
could be the one
she witnesses outside first
before locking herself back in.
Green Fuse
You buy a plant you cannot
name, you name a flower
you have not seen. A crimson whim
drives the force
to tether your ignorance upon your palms,
deep into your nails.
Press the leaves that fall from portage
into the book you call your current read.
Close the book
that gives you nothing now,
offers more pressure than impression
in its present function at hand.
A private garden in Georgia
with all of its growth labeled just for you,
is the out-of-town passerby’s exaltation
the way a public arboretum exists to preserve,
educate, enhance,
sector unbiased. You may believe
because the park where you seek shelter
is a mountain of sod,
waiting for a landscape architect’s next set of drawings,
a city’s next referendum. A place
you sought for safe haven,
is a scam, a sign, a curse. But you are still the one
who does not know the name
of the plant hanging ruby rich
above your porch rail,
still the one who could knock her fists against a board,
an inner ear to loosen a level plane,
a balance beam,
still the one from the clutches
of teeter-totter time ago.
Shape of Angels
If convening for each age
and never laying down to die,
if merely slipping into new clothes
and never changing what they cloak,
this famous convention would have stormed
the Take No Heroes Hotel,
would be resting in its suites by now. No,
there are nights
when the fullest moon will not offer
even the dimmest halo,
when the double-jointed,
alone crowd the light.
And with the sky so near,
your ear pressed to the wall,
you will hear the din—
a convention of devilish nymphs scratch high
in the mountains. Never-extinct, they
crunch other suns between their teeth.
EGO (Day 2,272)
“How describe the world seen without a self?”
—Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Enter this garden
of obsession. Edge growth
out to fill beds
with worry
stones. Ease your way
from grimaces to oval
reflection pools. Exit
through this iron gate
to a new order where
you might begin to see how
there could be a world
without the self.
Outside the Fence
Through galvanized steel diamonds,
we exchange words. I can almost feel
your breath brush off
this skin I wear. As much as I want
that zinc and wire to dissolve
so I can touch your blues harp marred lips,
please don’t sing them to pieces.
I need you
to disappear
into the curve of your unspoken
phrases, so I can continue
to be blown away
with these tree branches breaking against night.
Day 1,256
She dreams of exploding
into tiny corkscrews
of stained purple paper
dropping onto a wooden floor.
She wishes she could inspire you
to rage over the mess.
She cannot understand
how you might sweep away
or ignore the color
she believes she might become
if only she could break open
her relationship to trees.
Burn Bridges (Day 2,444)
I can see the plume above your head
billows as if you were a mayor
in flammable hair. The river won’t ignite
this time. You’re on your own
with your torch tonguing
its way between stays to the old
wood. What a mouth
you’ve got on you. Mine
pressing against it
won’t save the world, won’t
prevent collapse. Kisses
rarely dampen anything. I’d like
my torch back.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 