Your book turns
me on too much I can’t
sleep I can’t stop
for punctuation I’m a girl
cliché it’s your words
not those naughty
photos or sketches.
Night Poems
Another One for the First City I Loved
Swan boats
Arthur Fiedler
Logan Sumner Tunnel
The Phoenix Newbury Comics
Fenway
Cruel April Cinquain
Night falls
late on this snow—
too late to mirror breath
or invite sky humming beneath
its sheen.
Twisted Anniversary
Twenty years ago when she thought she would live
forever, she tried to cut it
short. Twenty years later, she’s doing all she can
to preserve each daily miracle. Joy
Division was rattling in
her head: “She’s Lost Control.” Who knows what
the Roadhouse jukebox
was pumping out. It was Neil Young who awakened her
with a “Harvest Moon”
in April to a morning she didn’t know she would want
to know. Some dates are best
forgotten. She’s the lucky one who gets to remember the long play.
Is It Mine Again?
Dumptruck sings “Get off
my island.” Used to be
my refrain even though
I’ve always known no one
(especially me) can really own
it. Just missed going to college
with one Dumptrucker. Shared a cab
from the Lower East Side to Prospect Heights
early one Sunday morning with another.
An oral history gets written
down. What gets lost
in translation becomes ghost
poems that only recite
themselves under waxing
crescent moons. But when they do,
you can hear them echo
up freshly rained-on empty streets
with titles like “urban spring” and “long live
the lighthouse keeper.”
Now She’s Done It
“I wish I could speak sky.”
—Richard Hell (“Boy Meets Death, Boy Falls in Love” in Hot and Cold)
And still a shadowy figure
and steady footsteps stamping the rain
behind me cause trouble. I must retire
from this life before
it retires me. Says the old one, says
who. Five o’clock on a Friday flows
in both directions—make it three,
four, more. I see
the water sculpture gain
momentum as it spills off
the edge of a tower
atrium balcony. They move
waterfalls on rivers
as famous as the Mississippi
and others you can’t name too. What
should I do
with you now? Hot and cold. I flip
through it in a crowded Starbucks—sketched
penises fly by. And you—naked
on one page. I can’t stop
to stare/admire you/it.
In a crowded Starbucks.
That’s what I get
for pulling you out
here—for taking in
my daily double shot
espresso in a crowded Starbucks
in the first place. The last place
would be where a stranger refuses
to pass me.
Streamlines
A meeting rumbles in the back
room. I could be
one of them. But
I like my margin
where I can hitchhike
rides to dark dreams
and musings
about collocating
my secrets with old
punk gods. I could delve
into euphoric recall
from a passenger
side high in a flying
coffin. Repentance. It was those
black leather police
jackets that got very cool.
Wise Disguise
The way a punk
unravels slowly,
then zap—nothing left
save the recovered voice
of a city transient. Or, a dead
man wrapped in stray
dog’s fur. Or,
poems spilling
red over black.
Soap Song
“The life I live,
The one I hoped
To live—
How seldom
They coincide.
Sometimes, briefly,
They do;
Sometimes, in the city.”
—Gregory Orr, from The City of Poetry
And after all
that commotion
attraction betrayal
ecstasy memory
loss anarchy sexual
tension breaking
open night by night.
And after all
that walking waiting
crowding into a small
room sipping and spilling
coffee onto an unfinished
factory wood floor watching
it run
down the sloped boards
into seams
between checking
to see if the dark
river has dried up
smiling at the man
who asks
how are you
when he sits next to me.
This seat
will do.
And after all that
the reader
who is a writer
who was a punk musician
who stands on
an invisible stage
before us
is shorter
with a much warmer smile
than I imagined the founder
of the Blank Generation
to have.
This ragged sometimes damp
sometimes arid line I walk along
separates the punks
and rockers from the poets
and storytellers DJs and
critics from spoken word
artists and the rest of us.
And after all that
I see the line
wasn’t really there.
I’m just rambling
through it. Imaginary
borders don’t dissolve
till we outgrow them.
How To Define Punk to a 12 Year Old (or, Richard Hell at the Soap Factory)
Who lives
in this post-post-modern polyphonic
blitz? Blitz—not
bliss. I love
that anarchy—murder
of the omniscient
narrator. Reliable, or
not. Or,
is it an assassination? Did she
(or he) hold
political office? Or, at least
run? I could be running
to go to Hell
on time. I have a VIP seat, but
I should get
going. Don’t want
to miss a word. Think
of all those voices shouting
out of turn
their individual versions
of what it means
to burn in, burn on,
burn out.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 