I want you
to read me
all the time
even in the bath
even in your sleep
I’m so vain
I want you to want to believe
each poem is about you
they are about everyone
and no one
till the reader
enters the room
surveys the tile floor
wooden tables
plaster walls
painted cautionary yellow
chooses a chair
sits down
becomes part of the scene
an empty folding one
blocks an open window
its half-drawn shade
flaps in the breeze
“A writer is essentially a spy. . . .
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.”
—Anne Sexton (from “The Black Art”)
When we were lovers,
I didn’t know how
to wear lipstick.
When we were lovers,
we built and broke
our own code.
The Def Leppard
drummer still
used both hands.
Orwell’s novel
did not come true.
Ronald Reagan was president.
When we were lovers,
I had all the licenses
I would ever get—none.
When we were lovers,
you were thick,
I was snug.
We had no world
wide web. MTV was born.
Mark Zuckerberg, not yet.
We didn’t need replacements. Heard music
beneath stars, discovered our bodies’ perfect cadence
in a station wagon way-back.
When we were lovers,
house alarms went off
spontaneously.
When we were lovers,
eating ice cream was erotic—
didn’t give me stomach aches yet.
One bath almost shared.
One shower together
after three years of waiting.
We got locked inside a courtyard
outside a Brooklyn brownstone
and didn’t care.
When we were lovers,
a waft of ghostly smoke
occasionally hovered over the river.
When we were lovers,
we fought as intensely.
Almost.
We could reignite
as soon as one of us got off a plane
at the airport gate.
Thornton Pool had a high dive.
I belly-flopped off it.
You watched a swan glide down.
When we were lovers,
you would drive me home
at daybreak.
When we were lovers,
time stood still
but not for long enough.
When we were lovers,
we couldn’t keep our hands
off each other.
One letter got lost
for months.
Our timing was off.
Before 1950, making love
to one another could happen
through the mail without touching.
When we were lovers, we didn’t know how
three decades later we might submerge ourselves
in deep water to resuscitate the lost art.
Engine shut off,
brakes released.
We rolled the teardrop window car
down the driveway
like spies.
Curfew or no curfew,
we discovered our own
way to decode the night.
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.
Objects:
Our dead friend
moves our limbs, our mouths,
our lids, our hearts.
Marionettes and
so much more.
He releases our strings
simultaneously. Knows
it’s futile to fight the laws
of physics
even from his side.
Subjects:
Despite the forecast,
rain begins to slap
awake an etherized sky.
Our skin protects
those young spies
dressed in our eyes
testing our voices
as they prepare
to go.
You and I—
none of anyone else’s
goddamn business.
Never mind the mermaids,
we’ve gotten so far
beyond the bath.
Note: partially inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
(originally posted July 30, 2013)
I could use a child’s wooden foot
stool to reach the last
days of July. Painted red
or a mustard almost
too rich to see
in summer. So much has been written
about April’s
cruelty, but it is the majestic
peak of August
I cannot bear. Such a short distance
to pitch and tuck
into a somersault
down an observatory crowned
hill toward fall. Before
the month ends,
my father will die
all over again, and life will continue
without him. No ladder will stretch
high enough into the sky
to reach all those stars we reckoned our spirits with.
When the sun rises, first
where you are,
then an hour later
outside my apartment window,
we can see the flames
of a billion candles
inside each moment
if we resist the urge
to swipe our fingers
through the tips. Just for kicks
the way we did
when we were too young
to believe in death.
I am the governess
of my feelings. You, yours.
A bigger fire begins
to burn through the day
into night. Some liar’s pit
on a hill behind a school.
We could be tossing in
all kinds of combustibles.
My governess lets me
stay out all night now,
no questions asked.
It all hinges
on that first kiss—
the one that already happened,
plotted out a billion years ago.
Not one locked gate,
milk chute for crawling through,
car ignition. Not
a single regret.
Hey, summer solstice,
almost winter solstice here.
We call across an overlapping ribbon
to one another. No echo. No stanza.
No station necessary
in this endless ride. Everything
so perfectly compacted into
longest day shortest night longest night shortest day
stretching every fiber, nerve, strand.
Here we are two specks of gold
glitter stuck to a loop. A pattern
on an ancient sea turtle’s shell. Left earlobe
of a giant with wine-flavored tattoos.
We can’t take our eyes off the horizon
till the inner ear balances. Till vertigo
becomes the rippled gown of Veritas.
We are so broken into imperfect shards
of stained glass, so beyond trick photography
in this crazy 8 ball shaken down world.
If the whale returns
no longer white.
If a disembodied Cocteau hand
refuses to feed her
the next morning.
If Peter Walsh sells his pocketknife
and Septimus renounces
iron fences. If
she hadn’t feared
needles. If he had.
When Buckminster Fuller meets
Isamu Noguchi
in a Greenwich Village tavern. When
Broadway meets Fifth Avenue
to birth a 22-story skyscraper.
When brackish water splashes onto her deck.
A ferry paused in a channel.
If she touches your lower lip
with her left pinky.
When a gently pressed fingerprint
becomes the new memory.
I have hidden
my big dripping heart
in a secret place. It hangs
from a rack
out of reach.
I believe no one—
not even you—
knows where. I am
so wrong. You’ve passed
by the site
so many times
over decades and degrees.
Never thought to look
till now. It was so easy
for you to find.
Affixed to that thing
all this time.
To what? Where? There.
A number. A symbol.
A geography without coordinates,
my love.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 