The devil’s backbone takes
her breath to feed
the artesian well that spills
into the pond she hopes
to see from her sunroom
window this time next year.
Morning Poems
Sottobosco
Angry late winter wind blows
apart my image
of you—a figure
with feet firmly planted, set apart
from the others. A bed
of needles for any season, a nest
of thought that could incubate
lady slippers to outgrow
their endangerment—
it’s time. Time to cup
my hands into an annual
vessel to catch the belief
again. It leaks, its surface
has become cracked
and stained. Still, each year
I return to the O horizon.
These patterns that define
my fingers—could they be
next? I wonder if I can forget
myself for another spell to hold
that essence of things this time around.
“The Most Fatally Fascinating Thing in America”*
“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.
Drift—Or Curse of the Smiling Eyes
Slip on ice but don’t fall
down. Seventeen more
days. We want a preview.
If I were a train,
I’d be local
and mostly underground
till I’m not. Sub or el—either way
I’d move people more
than I could ever move you
or me into tomorrow’s
shades of the unstratified.
Choker
She gives herself whiplash—
not a car in sight. Traffic
jams inside her head.
In Situ
A regatta underway in ditch water,
the wind changes direction
just in time. To survive the melt
without damage is no small act. Welcome
to the drip age. From it, drought isn’t a life
saver. Water—too much— not enough—can kill. When
this planet gets the DTs,
it’s all over but the quakes.
Arched & Discarded
If this is intimate—this
niche tucked inside an atrium—if
this sliced open
building represents the way
we live now, then I wonder
what that old pair of black dress
pants left in the snow
outside an even older church
means. Tried and hung
sneakers have dangled from obsolete
telephone lines above shadowed
movements—guilty and otherwise.
(Day 3,009)
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.
Sleep Demigods
If I am everyone
in this dream, who are you
to tell me how
it should end? The use
is mine—and disuse. You are
a figment trapped
in a smoke ring
I rarely produced. You are
the one my unconscious
heart won’t forget.
Winter afternoon naps
are the best. Caged trees
in snow banks stand
for a patience
I’m still learning to wake into.
Absent of Choking
You once said if I didn’t smell
like smoke I would smell
like sex. Now that the air has cleared,
I just want to smell
fresh coffee brewing
come morning, an old book fanning
open in the afternoon, traditional Tibetan
incense burning come evening,
rosewater splashed on my face
before I sleep.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 