Narratives flood the garden
of sound. Why does rocking
a cradle calm them—shake
trebling from all those voices?
She can only hear two
knocking about
in her head now.
When it comes down
to a single
deepening whisper,
she’ll know she’s arrived
home for the night.
No ode—pastoral
or urban
myth—will do. No
flag raising
in any pattern or
color. No parades—though
he loved them.
It’s an odd.
A prime.
The current count:
7 days to make a week.
7 notes on a musical scale.
7 attributes of physicality.
7 words to Step 7 begins humbly.
7 home states plus one.
7 children and grandchildren.
7 months to make a preemie.
Some say seven is
this world.
What comes next? I might ask him.
To listen for an answer
in night-falling murmurs
of an otherworldly pulse becomes
the point—not the answer itself.
Dog-eared becomes
a symbol, a brand, that act
of defilement your grandmother
warned you about. Who remembers
where they were? The angle
they approached the image from? Who
remembers which image? To recall
the young woman nodding off
next to you in a packed auditorium,
the color of the floor
beneath your feet, how her head
bobbed and drooped
toward her man, then you
(no drool) is
to be
a bookmark floating
on an liquid crystal display sea.
The height of the podium,
the last thing you drank
before entering the ball
room. The play
of words suspended
from an unidentifiable drop
ceiling before they settle
onto a page—folding down
a top edge of translucent
thought. Dog-eared.
I have become a double
shot espresso to make
the transition from afternoon
to evening smooth. To become civil
twilight burning full
force through
late winter urges
me onward. March’s
sooty snow be damned.
Will I
get the secret
code in time to enter
that Boston speakeasy after
hours?
This is not
about dissecting bee
hives, celebrating dead
presidents (stacked or face
down), the last time
I saw grass grow
anywhere. This is
about the first time
we spoke and you made
a joke and the train jerked
to a full stop. It was the end
of the line,
and you and I
had just begun.
On a cocktail
napkin to be recited
in a pub
on Valentine’s Day. Never
drank whiskey when
I still drank. Never
understood romance
when I still believed
it could happen
to me. Never stopped
believing it could
happen to you.
Brother
lost into night
has not gone far enough
to want to be discovered lost—
brother.
Begins with
no hidden driveways
for the unlicensed. Then no
skylights in skyways
to confuse this weather. And no
more nowhere
without a degree
of separation from
omnipresent becomes
another verb. But some parts
of the tongue
are just
flavor blind.
Brews under
the stairs. Who are
the mixed-blood
majority? She is not
one but is
the other. Written
and whispered
in a quiet zone.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 