Sappho’s poems. Nick Drake’s last
songs. Tiger reserves. My memories, his,
that pier over bay
water. A hearse afloat. The underside
of a bridge. One car
on a train crossing
this river. The moon
most nights. Your love.
My faith. The sky itself.
Morning Poems
Into the Lens
A waking smirk paints her face
young. Her daydreams
have become pages
from old journals ripped
out, restacked, sewn
back together
in an order she believes
would have sustained
such animation. Plagiarizing is
alright as long as she
doesn’t plagiarize
herself. But it’s too much
work to steal from others. That look
is for no one—now it belongs
to these worn-down back streets.
Shape-shifter
I am discarded ice
sculpture. Placed
alongside a loading
dock outside the rail
corridor, I will not melt
this far north. I’m a swan,
pedestal, easel-shaped. I’m
what’s left after a party
where I might have been
the center
of attention, or highly visible
aside. Now I am what you see
when you escape out the back—or
just dream of it
while taking another drag.
Who Gets It
When the surface below
her feet can no longer be
trusted and she can no longer hold
in that scream, sweat and fever break
before unsuspecting eyes. What happens
to old souls at middle
age? She lost hers
in the bottom of a bottle
of Rioja, a fermenting worm hoarding
all visionary movement in its ringed
pulse, only recovered
it in the past decade. Is it preserved
or a witness
to exquisite decay? Relax,
roll with it, let your timbre
do its catch and release. But, no,
she can’t. She’s not ready to expose that worm
to its reflection in the glass
floor. She still believes
a ceiling would be a better prop.
Asbury Park
Your name too terrifying
to say, all those wounds
on display before there were scars.
They say you
are rescuing yourself now. But
back then you were locked
out, no one in Ocean
Grove dared to hold the key.
And I say what
difference does it make—graffiti
on a crumbling wall, the crumbling
wall to come down. What difference
now that your reconstructed
boardwalk no longer holds up
my father’s pedestrian prayers
to one hundred shades
of gray ripple and surf.
Now that he’s too far
from any water’s edge
to speak. What a difference
to see you now.
Peripatetic Commute
To memorize obstruction,
or just its possibility
in debris flying from men
working, hidden patches of ice
on a side street side
walk, breaks
serendipity
into slivers too thin
to support the weight
of hope, too sharp
to be ignored.
For Sheri on Her 45th Birthday
She cannot translate darkness
from those days when the sun only exaggerates
cold, only teases with its light. The blank
scrim separating her from us does not give forth
a familiar word or shape to fill
in with pointillist tools or hatched lines. It stares
back without a batting, no shadow limbs
to move behind it, without one
eyelash dropping free
on her cheek. She can only see as far
as it opens before her—all of a life truncated
at 22, more than twice that
number of years swinging
without interpretation. What tongue
do the dead whisper in as they do the math?
Little Mermaid Little Song
You could have been a caryatid before
you learned to swim. Water gave you
a perfect getaway.
No longer shouldering it,
you’ve made a throne
of past struggles. All freedom
comes at a price—twice
losing your head, even your right arm
you never said you were willing
to give away. When you go
to China to play ambassador, your drowning
sisters may try to lift your island
rock for themselves. Your
burden will be theirs.
Walden Ripple Effect
Until she loses herself
to light in truncation,
to upside down black and
white photos of bridges—
some smiles do turn
down—till then, she will not
find herself
having faith in those infinite
relations and figure eights
swooning over sidewalks.
Then I Will (Day 2,518: Take 2)
Take away all definite
articles overworn
and shaped to fold
as tightly as a cliché
in a cheap plastic frame. Throw
leftover scraps into a tipped
over metal ash can
before flames burn
another year’s calendar
beyond recognition. Steal
another man’s thought
after an October
snow leaves a bouquet
of unlabeled white
traces and artificial heat.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 