Tonight
Noguchi saves
all of us from those fears
we nourish in our souls before
morning.
Night Poems
Loads
I still live
in a coin operated
world. These social networking
tricks do not align
with how I shrink
from true human
contact when the moon begins
to count. If he kept the letters
I wrote, where would they be
now? Hearts bought
at estate sales
are non-refundable.
Rumble Strip
For non-drivers a dead man’s
curve exposes an inner belt
deep within. Just as suddenly,
just as lethal, just as exhilarating
for the survivor. But I
don’t know if I should accelerate
around this grief.
A Darker Pomegranate
I collect dates
as if they were door
handles. Seek the perfectly shaped one
to build a saudade
life around. Your birth, or death,
or the afternoon you got divorced—
it could be one of those.
But I choose to lock
my eyes on a calendar
with the first day of school
circled in red. Tuesday,
September 2nd, 1980. You looked right
in red. Let the vintage ink
smear. Now I will too.
45
My mother could replace the broken
record, not my broken
heart. No one stepped on it—I
was born this way.
Is There Internet Where You Are?
Yes, I do this thing to live
life twice.
To get a second chance
to say
the right thing, glance
at you
from the right angle,
take charge
when you hesitate,
lean back
in silence when it’s your turn.
I’ll learn to accept all these
little deaths
when you show me how in the next
revision.
What Flavor Preoccupation
Always a bit of gravel
or tar stuck to the bottom
of my shoe. Seldom
anyone watching
when I knock it off.
Haven’t studied a piece
of sculpture in over a month.
Longer for a painting
on a wall or dance performance
on some specific site.
I’m using
pretzel formation
to collect images
to keep from losing
my mind—you are gone.
How long do I wallow
in your death?
It was so long ago,
your kisses tasted
like smoke, not mine.
Handwriting Not on the Wall
Not ready—not ready
for what? Sexy architecture
exposed to the naked
and untrained. To mourn
another death I missed
during my two-year
blackout. To check into a library
hotel. Talk to the dead
for ten days straight
about a dress I might wear. Remember
my dreams again. Or, it is this:
I have put everything down—the bottle,
smokes, the pen I’ve used
to write letters of desperation. It is that
I’m just not ready to go.
Summer ’81
Engine shut off,
brakes released.
We rolled the teardrop window car
down the driveway
like spies.
Curfew or no curfew,
we discovered our own
way to decode the night.
Another Letter to a Dead Man
Coincidence? In the hours before you died,
my cat trapped a bat in the claw
foot tub. Played with it almost
to death. When I called a trusted friend to rescue it/
me, we both naively hoped
it might fly into the midnight sky—broken
wing and all. And the hope that I might see you
glide through this life one more time was dashed
against unforgiving pavement in that moment—the one
I wouldn’t know I would desire
to retrieve for years.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 