Years back
my mother owned
a car named Lucifer.
And you wonder why I refuse
to drive.
Night Poems
Couture
Each dress is a poem
I didn’t write. Wish
I did. Take them off
with care. Each one
must keep its shape
to remind me
I could be real.
Non-Refundable
She wants to scream
into another night she won’t enter—
let there be no more day ones,
let this fear dissolve
with chalk on a sidewalk
in the rain
to keep this disease quiet
straight on till morning.
So many conditions to be met
after dark. She pretends to be a stranger
when a drunken shadow approaches—
it’s the only thing left to do.
Kettle On
The back burner’s blue
flame in this dark is too blue
to become my personal amethyst—
too close to scorched red metal
not to be.
No Equivalent
In English. The sea is a false promise
of return,
ebb and flow,
rhythmic come and go,
the Portuguese fisherman’s saudade,
the Korean cane cutter’s han,
the American salesman building a heartland,
longing for salt and brine
he has never known.
Unsung Of
I am the outlier
toward a route,
I am the proclivity
toward disbanding communes.
I am the lock
picked and forgotten
on the storm door,
I am longing itself
plucked and mounted
on the den wall.
I am
without heteronyms,
without Whitman,
Pessoa,
I am this plain,
unbannered song
of go-low yearning
caught inside the frame
of a habitat gone wrong.
I am fallen
winged fruit
through quilled foliage
surrounding the roots
of our tough elastic wood
into another millennium,
a clique fallen
loud and brash
without an echo.
This Time Dublin
One of those downpours, it falls
hard and fast and is gone
before city gulls reach the south quays. No rainbow.
Wrong time of day. The smallest
of Calatrava’s bridges, a steel white winged bird
poised to take flight
over the Liffey. And she is
standing still, at the midway
point, her head bare and bowing forward. Searching
for a lost red scarf, she begins to let go
real tears, the way those embedded glass lights
have been smashed by vandals or too many cars rushing by.
Bath or Shower?
(virtually overheard poem from www.blogcatalog.com)
I don’t have time in my life. I live next to scarcity—
what a cold wake-up blast. One of the biggest,
clean bodies
of water,
and I don’t have a rubber duck.
I am the infamous
queen of bubbles and essential
oils, conserving my next
5-10 minutes to improve
circulation. You must be ashamed to love
luxuriating in aversion. The thought
of just sitting there
in my own filth. Haven’t you thought
about that? All my water
comes from top quality ardor,
diverted into flowerbeds
and landscaping
by Jacuzzi jets. I can’t stand
lavender and eucalyptus.
Give me palpitations in the evening
before I sleep. I love soaking,
and I like to be greasy. I mean,
to tone the skin, make my hair shinier.
Other activities can be enjoyable
in the tub. Someone stole
my planet, and it really doesn’t matter.
I have a huge, open mouth
that I keep fresh, for an American anyway. But
baths don’t cover me
like they used to. Turns out,
I’m the delicate type.
I can only be dry-cleaned,
and that explains everything.
Upper Mississippi Tone (Day 2,426: Take 2)
On a grayscale
from blizzard to moonless
night, she rates you scattered
clouds and the smiling bright
new 35W Bridge.
Empire Builder
Somewhere between Columbus and Milwaukee someone got caught
between making good time
and death. We don’t see it,
when our double-decker train stops
in the middle of
nowhere. Could be Spain 1985. Passengers rush into the caboose
to get between the scene
of the accident
and their own lives. A flat
bed truck clipped, a driver without surface
wounds. Our conductor calmly checks the cars
for damage, calmly requests
that doors and windows remain closed
to keep out a host
of flies in between thriving
and retired. I remember there being a death
without betweens—Kokomo, Indiana, 1972. A monsignor, all the way blown away,
they say, whiskey bottle
in one hand, drove his car through a level
rail crossing, half-barrier gate down, red
lights flashing, warning bell chiming.
That train whistle must have moaned
a haunting response. The long-long-short-long of it
a broken down code.
It must have been instant. Don’t remember
what happened to that train—no passengers aboard,
only what gets freighted into the night.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 