Tone deaf, color
blind to the hues
of a man’s gestures. Bored,
shy, turned
on, off—who can
tell? Gossip dug out
of a dumpster, laid
in the mid-summer grass
to dry out, to cure well
enough for a taste. I don’t eat
meat. That’s no excuse.
I’m human. I share
secrets—only my own.
Just as suddenly as it resurfaces
in some stirred-up
grit loosened
by spring, it can sink
into a new dormancy
nourished by her calm
flesh. It can but hasn’t. Alert
and proud, this desire
has begun to float.
You swim in the biggest one
of a chain
of lakes. Don’t fear
the consequences. There your head goes
popping through the surface
then bubbling back under. You
were adamant—you don’t
like the tone of Kerouac’s poems. So there you go
through water without salt,
through muck
seen and unseen. I could not be
so brave. I’d rather splash
through an ocean without narrative,
would rather let sound
carry me
than the other way around.
“I also have all space
And St Louis too
Light follows rivers
I do too
Light fades, I pass.”
—Jack Kerouac, from the 55th Chorus of “San Francisco Blues” (Book of Blues)
If this were a poker game,
I would be out
by now. I would be
reflecting on the morning
heron in the stream
between little lake
and wetland infill. Would be
a reflection
of myself on tip toes
hoping to see over
the Hennepin Avenue Bridge
rail to the pull
of the big river
as it takes all the space
it needs to spread
these northern myths
down Saint Louis way.
I would be out and free
to gamble away
another sunset.
To beg, borrow, or steal
for this, to swing in an inked
playground, to live life
as a prayer opening
into another garden’s bloom,
to identify the shape
of a tiny island
now succumbed to a wetlands
birthright, to be willing
to start over
each morning
is what remains.
A group chant in the back room. Espresso
machines hiss
in the main. The chanters clap. I may
know the words but I drink
the standard drip black
up here with coffee
jerks. I was no mixologist. Sometimes
it still hurts to mingle.
I collected them
from their metal button holes
in a women’s bathroom stall.
I tucked one
behind your ear, the other
behind mine. I did what I could
with them: message
in red, in elongated green,
message in true thorn.
I did
what I could.
Should I have
taken them
with me when I left
your room at dawn?
A perfect poem
of the ridiculous becomes
subtle, becomes two roses
crossed on a table
we left behind
by choice,
we left behind
by choice,
say it twice
for both of us,
for what’s left of them.
A yellow cab double
parked, medium-sized U-Haul
behind it—I know
these getaways
too late, arrivals
too early. When moving in
becomes an art,
it’s time
to reconsider the vessel. Above
or below it, I just want
to crawl inside
the belly of someone’s home—yours?
Or, it could be mine.
She walks deserted streets. Not the real
you, but one
she’s been fabricating
with rope, leftover images
from an old black-and-white
film. She believes in
rewind, fast forward,
long pauses. The sun
reveals gray
in all its shades—romance
along a wave length,
a particle spinning
and at rest.
She has no way
of knowing where you are,
what you might be
doing in this moment.
Only hopes
you’re in it,
touching something
more real than this
creation that dissolves
under the light.
He was minus three
when those songs from heaven
were playing on
AM radio. I was zero.
When he was zero, I was
in Northern Illinois
learning how
to say three instead
of free.
I would never be
so much so again. No multiples
will return me
to that coincidence—one
he’ll never know.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 