Expectations for the long arm
of light to cradle her—better
yet jolt her—into a wider frame
can only lead to one thing:
disillusionment
that after tonight everything begins
to shrink. Or, there’s another one: relief
that summer is poised to stretch across
the best spills and spans.
Enamor is a taste
more than a color. Extrovert
texture. Black cherry—there’s a hue.
Signage means more to her
than the shape
of these chairs. Positive thinking
is a song.
I saw worms everywhere curling
and pulsating across
the sidewalk the day before. Airport
terminal power mysteriously out
the day before. Seductive electricity
shreds after midnight
the day of. Morning showers
give way just long enough
to put me in a Sunday afternoon
trance. Those sirens have nothing
on us—cat and me—the moment
of. Just a few miles north
flattens. The day before
sinks to the muddy bottom
of puddles where urban legends
have drowned.
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.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 