Wait for me inside
the vestibule
of my inner ear.
You’ll make me dizzy.
I don’t mind.
It’s not you.
It’s that damn dimple.
The one that appears
on your left cheek
when you give me
that crooked smile.
I thought it signaled
your love.
Peel off
the red
raincoat. Turn
it inside out.
We all make each other
sick some
of the time
remaining in
the glass.
Nausea dissipates
when I walk it off.
When I snap
my fingers and forget
to hold my breath.
I forget
to say good-bye
to the bridge
before I cross it.
My silence
becomes the silence
in a field after a cattail fire
finally dies out.
Your eyes
tell me
to do it.
I trade rough
air for rough
water and swim
where I used to drown
before you
and those dangerous eyes.
I erase the horizon
with a cloth
covered in blood—
could be a fermented
raspberry smoothie
that exploded
in my hand.
I spit out
the wine
before it spits
out me.
Just in time
to hear the last minute
of “Night Fever,”
I want to walk one more block
beneath an elevated subway line
in a white dress
and platform shoes.
I want to dance alone
to the end
of a pier you and I saw
but were too afraid
to approach.
I won’t turn my back
on the waterfront,
or pretend
to be a contender.
What are we going to do
when Robert DeNiro is gone,
when the children have never heard of
Greta Garbo or Marlon Brando?
What’s that trick
when the artist draws
an entire world on a stucco wall
without lifting his brush?
Why is it a crime
to run a sentence
the full length of the sky,
but not a pencil line?
Color forgives
the wave its naked trespasses
in the dark.
The wide black vinyl belt
slips down too far now—
I hold my breath
against the eye doctor’s orders.
Because I could never ghost
anyone, especially you, or him, or him,
even if you invented the method,
used it on me more than once.
I don’t know what to say
about stalkers except
I hope they all get lockjaw
and spend eternity
in the Rust Belt.
My neck hurts
not from looking in both directions,
but from spinning my head
360 degrees like a good spinster.
Or solo musician who unscrews his,
places it in the passenger seat
so he has someone to talk to
on the lonely road.
It isn’t really funny,
but we laugh anyway
because he has those crazed eyes
and desire to see modern dance moves
in the elbow
of the man who stands
behind me.
All the widowed words
hesitate to walk into a bar.
No one wants to go first,
to be so alone again.
Greta Garbo would have
pushed one
inside the swinging door
just to watch the expression
it makes before falling
into place.
I might change my name
to tetanus
to honor all those ghosts,
I mean stalkers.
I mean who’s to say
it won’t end tomorrow,
or tonight, if the sky clears.
I believe every day
should be a Wednesday
night in the Flats.
When I find no stage
or maligned river,
I go searching for them
inside my wrecked heart.
He saw the scar you left,
licked it before I bit his cheek.
We laughed till the sun rose
in another Rust Belt city.
Ruined for this life, I hear
a solitude whisper to me
in an afterhours glow.
I lie in the middle
of an empty, one-way street
I love beyond reason
without a fear.
I look for you
everywhere—beneath grates
and cellar doors
that open onto city sidewalks.
On the Brooklyn Bridge
pedestrian ramp
next to a woman selling
sliced mango.
In the Fulton Street subway station.
Behind that window
covered by Banksy’s (or Mr. Brainwash’s)
“Love is the Answer” Einstein.
In the Hudson, over the underpass,
inside the fermented
raspberry smoothie bottle
before it explodes.
An instant murder scene
impersonation stains
a white room
in the Lexington Hotel.
We lose an old friend
to a heart attack in July,
find each other
at his funeral after 31 years.
Maybe you didn’t want
to be found. Maybe I should be losing
myself in Grand Central
sky constellations instead.
I am a tale
of two cities
ping ponging east
to north midwest
and repeat
the net getting
tangled and slack
big to minnie
no I won’t say it
pomme
there I did
Atlantic Ocean
estuarial to Mississippi
River and falls and lots of lakes
the Spuyten Duyvil
and Minnehaha creeks
four seasons
some longer than others
much longer
so cold so hot so pretty
in October
First Avenue
to the Bowery Ballroom
no more CBGB
no more Uptown Bar
no more every night
with smokes and shots
Walker Whitney
MIA MoMA Met
Central Park
Cedar Lake Trail
High Line
skyway skyway skyway
best of worst of
in a continuous loop
blurs the distinction
Loring Park
Kingsbridge the Bronx
Uptown the Upper West Side
home home
I say it twice
in two different time zones
to mark my place
“Throw the calendar away,
gonna find a jukebox of steel. . . .
Revelry in borrowed clothes.”
—Jay Farrar (from “Jukebox of Steel”)
Two rivers merge
to make a third.
No longer a prehistoric tool
made of flint, I am
a new sidescraper
made from an abandoned,
three-story coke works mill
115 feet longer
than the Empire State Building
is tall.
I don’t make fire
since I put down
the pack and lighter,
since I gave away my power
for the last time.
A parting gift
for a man
who doesn’t fear
borders or wormholes.
Two songs merge
to make a third
I hum from a train
as it rumbles through
the Rust Belt.
I’ve gotten on
the wrong one.
The Capitol Limited
not the Lake Shore Limited.
The Empire Builder runs
nowhere near here.
And two cities won’t merge
to make a home.
because
Minnesota boys
the first cool night in late August
and a blanket
pulled off the shelf
because
the Mississippi
any time of day or season
because
First Avenue
with its ceiling replaced
because
winter windchill
bragging rights
the first warm day
in April
maybe it’s May maybe June
because
Loring Park
Armajani’s Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge
John Ashbery
in both directions
because
sculptures by
Noguchi Shea Serra
Lake of the Isles
Cedar Lake Trail
Minnehaha Creek
because
the C.C.
because
Minnesota boys
Who will answer
this time?
Which one of me wants to tackle it
today?
I will.
I/we have no choice.
I/we say the same thing
each time asked.
Time is the ultimate
four letter word
scrawled on all the walls
of all the buildings
in all the cities
within all the worlds
we map
or make up.
The ultimate reverse
graffiti reveals
how much dirt we accumulate
within our own inventions.
Leave it to the scientists
and philosophers,
this poet (and this one and this one and)
hears an echo
split open in an alley
where a mangled chainlink fence
and rotting garbage in a dumpster
are proof enough for her
time does exist
inside this heart
where love and loss
slow dance all night
into a new day.
And it might rain.
“A writer is essentially a spy. . . .
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.”
—Anne Sexton (from “The Black Art”)
When we were lovers,
I didn’t know how
to wear lipstick.
When we were lovers,
we built and broke
our own code.
The Def Leppard
drummer still
used both hands.
Orwell’s novel
did not come true.
Ronald Reagan was president.
When we were lovers,
I had all the licenses
I would ever get—none.
When we were lovers,
you were thick,
I was snug.
We had no world
wide web. MTV was born.
Mark Zuckerberg, not yet.
We didn’t need replacements. Heard music
beneath stars, discovered our bodies’ perfect cadence
in a station wagon way-back.
When we were lovers,
house alarms went off
spontaneously.
When we were lovers,
eating ice cream was erotic—
didn’t give me stomach aches yet.
One bath almost shared.
One shower together
after three years of waiting.
We got locked inside a courtyard
outside a Brooklyn brownstone
and didn’t care.
When we were lovers,
a waft of ghostly smoke
occasionally hovered over the river.
When we were lovers,
we fought as intensely.
Almost.
We could reignite
as soon as one of us got off a plane
at the airport gate.
Thornton Pool had a high dive.
I belly-flopped off it.
You watched a swan glide down.
When we were lovers,
you would drive me home
at daybreak.
When we were lovers,
time stood still
but not for long enough.
When we were lovers,
we couldn’t keep our hands
off each other.
One letter got lost
for months.
Our timing was off.
Before 1950, making love
to one another could happen
through the mail without touching.
When we were lovers, we didn’t know how
three decades later we might submerge ourselves
in deep water to resuscitate the lost art.
I try to walk a mile on a boardwalk
in your shoes. Trip on your laces.
See your life flash before me. Details of mine
get scrubbed off a stucco wall.
moving moving parental divorce
moving moving starve date rape
moving moving miscarriage obsession
moving addiction overdose on purpose
moving stabilize common law divorce
slipping obligate ram ventilator
about to pause aka slow suicide relief
traveling scarred terrified still moving
I can’t describe what I see of yours.
It’s not my place.
Where is my place?
Help me find my place.
I live in a building
made of saudade and duende
at the bottom
of a concrete hill. Help me
celebrate reverse
graffiti where it belongs.
What’s left. Just a washed-out, deep
female voice that cracks
in the urban wilderness
after a late night rain.
I have leaned over
the flickering flame of your thinking
candle. Am singed without regret.
Help me find mine.
Days in a week, deadly
sins, cardinal
numeral,
the Sabbath,
veils, virgin
daggers,
sacraments
spill onto the eighth
month. Only three
of them can stain
that late summer
block of moments.
Three of them
going back in time:
August 27, 2012
At civil dawn
my father gasps, slips
into death
for infinity.
The saddest relief
shuttles through my veins.
August 7, 2012
Twenty days before
I lose my father,
a rupture
inside your head
kills you. You see infinity.
Return to this.
And the third one
in another century:
August 17, 1980
In a half
circle, friends
drink beer
in your family’s kitchen
the night our eyes
first meet.
Never
mind
infinity,
time
collapses
urgently,
immediately.
We go
forward, backward, sideways
in a trance—
desperate to remember
how it feels to be so young,
to still believe
we are immortal.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 