This fat day,
with its bare branches, precedes no more
ashes for me.
Wipe foreheads, clocks, songs, stairs, smoke
stands, seeds, souls
down. Just for today. Tomorrow I still may
go lean.
Blogger’s Burden
These things I put down
to be compressed—
so self-contained—
now come
with tags attached.
Condensation
While you lament the passing
of Chalmers Johnson,
I try to defend the poetry
in window shopping
for dresses—occasionally stopping
to buy. Floral print tees
should bloom on the back
as much as the front.
Semi-translucent is still
classified. This rock
glass holds more
than someone’s meltdown. Some things
are better left unseen.
Sottobosco
Angry late winter wind blows
apart my image
of you—a figure
with feet firmly planted, set apart
from the others. A bed
of needles for any season, a nest
of thought that could incubate
lady slippers to outgrow
their endangerment—
it’s time. Time to cup
my hands into an annual
vessel to catch the belief
again. It leaks, its surface
has become cracked
and stained. Still, each year
I return to the O horizon.
These patterns that define
my fingers—could they be
next? I wonder if I can forget
myself for another spell to hold
that essence of things this time around.
“The Most Fatally Fascinating Thing in America”*
“The stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city.”
—James Weldon Johnson, from “My City”
What if this is how it’s going to be—
atmospheric screen frozen,
no rebooting. Only one season left,
all natural warmth from the sun
a myth
our ancestors handed us
on a microwavable platter. The raw
movement dies from lack
of passion.
No more fire
in the belly, no more burning
desire to create friction—
to get next to you. This table wobbles.
That type set to tell on those paintings
has shrunk
to a grunt. I’ve lost
the secret code to maintain
an allusion. This uncoordination
has nothing to do with my left hand.
* James Weldon Johnson, from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
Drift—Or Curse of the Smiling Eyes
Slip on ice but don’t fall
down. Seventeen more
days. We want a preview.
If I were a train,
I’d be local
and mostly underground
till I’m not. Sub or el—either way
I’d move people more
than I could ever move you
or me into tomorrow’s
shades of the unstratified.
Or Flaxseed
Why can’t I accept
your invitation—to what
would it be to cause this collapse
of self-awareness. Not a rhetorical question
but one for the digital social etiquette
manual not written
down. Love between bytes
hasn’t caught on. Or, I haven’t caught
it. Inoculation is how I live now. And these invites
seldom require leaving this post
where I navigate traffic
inside a grain of sand.
Air-Bridged Harbor*
“Whose flame/Is the imprisoned lightning.”
—Emma Lazarus, from “The New Colossus”
In a slow return to daylight after hours, she winks
at March and flirts
with her own promises to wake up
a tiny piece
of dirt. Hers is an impassioned lightning
that could strike
even now—before spring.
* also from Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus.”
She Quit
Seven dollars still in her pocket
as she rounds the skyway connector
without a detour. No purchase.
necessary—she’s already won
a trip to freedom.
At least an overnighter
while window sills remain banked
with snow here for another seven (or so).
Metal Grin
In an era when buildings opened
with zippers, she fastens her life together
with safety pins. Then she hears them drop
one by one on dried mud. Inside
gets entangled in the outside—a blur
with or without corrective lenses. Pricked fingers,
the aromatics of March come next.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 