If blank walls are criminal, he’ll obey
the law with a spray can
till he needs a place to sleep. Till walls
become doors that open
onto back alleys
where the sun can’t get in. The spoon
he bends tonight
will be the surface he refuses
to touch at civil dawn. Six degrees
below without hope of a single aubade.
And then finally the rain
comes to crash night into its lover
lighting to pronounce a distant crack
of ecstasy. I won’t go
to the window. I know. Tomorrow
morning the world
will smell of lilacs and the memory
of wet concrete
and bark. And into it
I will walk around a corner
ready to give desire
another chance.
She’s going to write another
poem about how she almost
moved
to Georgia. And she’ll use
move
at least two more times
before finding relief
for a blistered left
thumb. This burn—an accident.
An embarrassment.
An encounter
with a flat
iron nothing like the wedge
of a building where her former
self began.
Then the move
back
to Connecticut, then the big one
to Minneapolis—not Athens.
One music town
or another
moves
ahead. A northern girl
in the end—so far.
One hundred tornadoes. A fifth
of American Honey poured
on a stranger’s Raisin Bran. A heartland
spreads and evaporates
without any salt
in the water. It could happen
here—could happen
anywhere. It has.
That urban myth
protecting the urban
center—debunked. One hundred
tornadoes. A fifth of anything
clear. Street game
disasters.
She is one
of three sisters
too. She dives
into her own
wrecks. She can’t pick
up all that slack
on the line. But
she’ll celebrate
the way those combat
boots sink.
Is the book
still king
on some other planet? Do inventions run
along parallel sun
rays? She asks
these questions without knowing
what to believe
anymore about the universe or red doors. Who
she might trust
to protect these poems
from shattering into weightless space debris
is who she might ask
to answer the rest.
She opens the cupboard to run
her fingers along those tin
canisters
of sleep. Which one
tonight? Where
does she want to go? Who
does she want
to encounter in her nightgown
in the rain? And those questions
she won’t ask: Why
don’t scandals have names
like hurricanes? Monosyllabic
male names: Jon, Jay,
Bill, Mike, Dirk, Al, Zeus,
Jim, Dick. No doubt
about it—her dreams bend
genres and tend to leak
if tipped too far forward.
A paint lab, energy
substation, master
space plan mapping
more than a backyard
newsroom—the day
gets done without
losing a square
foot of roof
garden produce. Someone will
still push the clock
ahead 32 hours
from now. Even urban
farmers need
space to dream.
Inflatable buildings
mean nothing
to me. I’ve seen domes
cave under
the weight of too much
winter. Not enough
poses other problems.
To breathe deeply
without fear
of implosion
requires no posing.
No temporary shelter
could hide
this metamorphosis.
Some words open
too wide to be
swallowed without
choking. I’ve
choked enough to last
into my next
life. It could happen—but
probably not
to me. Once. Who
really knows. Best
to stick with a metallic
beauty and let
urges stew.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 