How do you know
you are raising
a terrorist? Hate is
a four letter word
that leaves a permanent smear.
Love is
a four letter word
that can remove
even the most stubborn stain.
Dragnet Debris
With original denim
colored eyes
still seeking,
she puts her obsession with death
of punk music
to rest. Silent influences
to speak of
alone together. Another sip
of a double shot
espresso in a true demitasse
cup to stay—
and so she loves
more than one city
these days. No ranking. Even in April
sleet and slush, she leans
toward jean not leather
jackets. But still leather
boots over canvas flats.
Another One for the First City I Loved
Swan boats
Arthur Fiedler
Logan Sumner Tunnel
The Phoenix Newbury Comics
Fenway
April 15, 2013
Boston:
I loved you first,
no terror can break you.
Boston—where my parents first met—
prevails.
Cold Water (April 14)
Maiden. She sank 101 years ago today,
or had started to sink. My father taught me
how to swim in a bay
off a rocky beach. He taught me
how to tie my shoes on porch steps
that spilled onto those rocks—though he said
I taught myself. I never sank
all the way to the bottom.
I’ve always managed to swim
ashore. So many to thank. I could not
have done it by myself.
Hell Was the Second Word You Uttered
It’s 9 am
on a Saturday
in April, do you know where
your Please
Kill Me t-shirt
is? Who you were
with the first time
you listened to Chronic
Town all the way through?
Gardening at night
is not always as romantic
as it seems. Mumbling may be
a gift of genius,
or merely of the arrogant
camouflaging an inferiority
complex the size of a bull’s eye
on that t-shirt
in XXXL. Or, it could all be
a joke—the way
we equate enunciating
with the truth.
How To Be Second Choice
Grace. A chess game indoors
could have been outside in
spring snow if it was
a bigger place
with more pocket parks. But here
everything stays
insulated. A punk jabbing
at the inside mechanisms
of my mind. In a dream,
the old New York employer
has all but shutdown. An empire
of books gets streamlined. Everyone
has moved
on. Even those who haven’t
when I wake will be gone.
Cruel April Cinquain
Night falls
late on this snow—
too late to mirror breath
or invite sky humming beneath
its sheen.
Twisted Anniversary
Twenty years ago when she thought she would live
forever, she tried to cut it
short. Twenty years later, she’s doing all she can
to preserve each daily miracle. Joy
Division was rattling in
her head: “She’s Lost Control.” Who knows what
the Roadhouse jukebox
was pumping out. It was Neil Young who awakened her
with a “Harvest Moon”
in April to a morning she didn’t know she would want
to know. Some dates are best
forgotten. She’s the lucky one who gets to remember the long play.
Is It Mine Again?
Dumptruck sings “Get off
my island.” Used to be
my refrain even though
I’ve always known no one
(especially me) can really own
it. Just missed going to college
with one Dumptrucker. Shared a cab
from the Lower East Side to Prospect Heights
early one Sunday morning with another.
An oral history gets written
down. What gets lost
in translation becomes ghost
poems that only recite
themselves under waxing
crescent moons. But when they do,
you can hear them echo
up freshly rained-on empty streets
with titles like “urban spring” and “long live
the lighthouse keeper.”
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 