Egg-sized but not shaped
hail knocks a fright against the brick
façade. Almost a century standing,
the building won’t fall down
in this maelstrom. The cat yowls
and races across the small-spanned
apartment (rectangle not railroad) before tornado
sirens begin to howl. He knows.
Windows open or closed, ricochet bent or pressure
cooked, twister real or exaggerated—this shelter for survival
may not withstand submission’s ache.
She cracks open a note
to see what’s inside.
Not that she would understand
the springs and pistons
responsible for a change
in key. Or the reflection
of a hidden spiral
stair in a window pane. A plate
of them—may as well be pomegranate
seeds or whole ginger.
She’s left to contemplate
a next step, forget
let it be.
This fat day,
with its bare branches, precedes no more
ashes for me.
Wipe foreheads, clocks, songs, stairs, smoke
stands, seeds, souls
down. Just for today. Tomorrow I still may
go lean.
These things I put down
to be compressed—
so self-contained—
now come
with tags attached.
“The stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city.”
—James Weldon Johnson, from “My City”
What if this is how it’s going to be—
atmospheric screen frozen,
no rebooting. Only one season left,
all natural warmth from the sun
a myth
our ancestors handed us
on a microwavable platter. The raw
movement dies from lack
of passion.
No more fire
in the belly, no more burning
desire to create friction—
to get next to you. This table wobbles.
That type set to tell on those paintings
has shrunk
to a grunt. I’ve lost
the secret code to maintain
an allusion. This uncoordination
has nothing to do with my left hand.
* James Weldon Johnson, from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
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.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 