Pain is
a messenger
she would like
to shoot
if she had
a gun. If
she believed
in that sort
of thing. If
she had
better aim. If
she wasn’t
sometimes in
love with it—him.
Night Poems
Brackish
She threw
nostalgia in—
along with your initials.
“Turn all
post-war, pre-washed, personal works
over for good, or
for as long as it takes
to forget
again.”
Another message
written in poor
handwriting, stuffed
in a glass
bottle to be tossed
into another body
of water—salt or fresh,
or in between.
12 Months
Just after midnight. Day
365. Just as time
closes the circle
tight, another one
in a parallel life
opens just a crack
to let in the light
of all the sunrises
my father did witness,
all the waves
he did hear crash
against all the shores
he claimed
with an intensity
in his eyes.
Just as I wonder
how I will see it rise
through a late August
storm, I remember
I could let go
of the immediate
future to breathe
more freely into this
slowed-down now.
I could address
my father directly,
and no one would care
if I believed
in spirits. And so
I do know
you are out there
whether I can see you
or not. This day
will break
as it will
no matter what.
360
Come full circle
is not complete
without the last five
days. Can I keep
the pace of grief
steady? Sequential
dreaming is overrated. Change
the setting, change
the internal
dialogue and all the reed
instruments collected
in one long
narrow room. Corridor
songs round their notes
best without cracking them.
In Six Days
The counting may stop,
the spinning through
a thousand seasons
in a day may
become a memory. Or,
it won’t. Who
can predict
how my feet
will move
on the island
at dawn.
Before Outdoor Music and Movie Night
Gray explosions
on white on
a shower
curtain say more
than a rainbow
garden of stripes
or petals or
letters of an alphabet
gone mad. And
the red
towel hanging
over the bar
becomes the doorway
to fabric tunes
in motion. Splat
ball in a claw
foot tub might sound
like this.
Risk Crossing
And more deadlines to meet
even in dreams. With extra
obstacles and an octopus
of black power
cords that need to get
from A to B
before dawn. And the fishing
might be
good if it rains. And that man
who walks his Cavalier
King Charles
Spaniel near the archery
range just might be
the last man she kissed good-night.
July 27: 11 Months
Startled by the number 27
on my apartment door,
the nearest cross
street to an avenue
I used to live on. Where
did it factor
in your life
before it became
the day you died?
No reflexes can wake you
now, no tallies
too low, temperatures
too high. You used
to say time
was make believe,
manufactured to manage obsessions—
yours, mine, the rest
of the world’s. When light
rain placates a summer afternoon,
I wonder who
did the making and what
materials were used. You would
have known. Which mattered
most—the distance
you traveled or the moments
passed observed? You kept track
of both despite everything
because you knew
no other way to live.
Was the Anniversary of Johnny Thunders’ Birth
Yesterday. An unmarked package
delivered on an unmarked
morning. But she knows. Has been expecting
you to return
for a new verse, extended play. Gone
from gonna to did
and looping
back again. No more bye-bye. What’s it
like? Who really wants to know?
Lacrimatory Cinquain
Weeping
becomes her salve
addiction not to cure
her gift to you and all those gone
before
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 