When she disappears
into the atmosphere, will you
remember the shape her mouth was in
when she last said
your name, when she stepped back
from that kiss? A poet skirts
in and around surfaces
seeking a place to attach herself to.
It’s a barnacle
life—she’s always preferred the underside
of piers.
Saudade isn’t saudade
if it is satisfied. When she least expects it,
other dreams come
into focus under the lights. Dust
of desire becomes frenzied
particles she won’t try to collect. She’s reaching
over the fence with its crumbling limestone
foundation to touch another’s—
carefully stacked against the wrought-iron grille.
She won’t see
the Atlantic tomorrow,
but she’ll get very close.
Inspiration in the spit
laden air, in the sequence
of events from lake to balcony
to converted house to nailing down
these recalcitrant emotions
with a red hammer
(yes, it must be red).
I’m no butterfly
catcher, am afraid
to pin down wings
gently with my thumb.
I still need to let them fly
off to endanger you
to my vulnerable side.
A writer loves
trees. This is the irony—how
we all come to love
our victims in the end.
Somewhere way uptown
“Bird Lives.” Barefoot
and in love, two dart
through wet cement.
Pen pals will be
spawned. Stenciled
broken promises, the Bronx
could have come crumbling
down. But it’s held on
for the ride. When the last
of the writing on the wall
rolled along those tracks,
I arrived ready
to be winded
by those step streets.
I didn’t know it
would be the shape
shifting that would catch me
in the throat.
This is different. This is
personal. This is my die
hard era. That step
street terrace dares me
to climb away
from those subway tracks,
exposed for miles, to identify
a graffiti memory I believed
they had erased
with the old #1 cars.
New Jersey’s Palisades spill
onto the other side where Wave
Hill becomes more than a label
on a Google map. How many women drink
their own tears
when they reach
this far north? When they think of Redbirds
and that combat steel skin? I am
not alone—but seeking solitude’s prayers
for grace. Limestone retaining walls
and brownstone facades
hold in echoes of their Portland,
Connecticut, quarry
origins. I swam in it
and thought I would drown
in that unfathomable thirst.
Whoever rescued me then
could need some of that now. I wouldn’t know.
Mine has become a visitor’s ascent.
I dwell in possibility’s prairie
now, its river a street lined with myth and mud
and messages I’m eager to decode.
To be
so colorless
and rhyme blind to the paint
used to cover the bark side is
my song.
Roadkill in black
eyeliner walks
through rain-soaked streets.
Some drift ghosted back
into shaken
frames, the brittle
bone long since crushed
and brushed off. Others resurrect
their posture in long black
boots to strut tall
toward their new hero
worship—could be shadow
dancing, could be a spiritual
awakening to a higher
burn of wheels over the real man
hole concealing their souls.
If I were a museum,
I would adopt
the ampersand
before at. Swirls
of entanglement mean
more to me
than a spiraling into
sense of place.
If I can’t have home,
I’ll take the plural
loci, the many phases
of identity, the journeys
over arrival, options
over commitment—
the possibility
of leaning into infinity.
If I were
a typo, I wouldn’t want
to be
discovered. I would hide
in the middle
paragraph
in the middle
of an incomplete
thought You might create
me, but you’ll never know
me or the impact
I might have
on what they think
of you, never mind me.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 