A first floor cremation
urn gallery comes to me
in a dream
where I’m riding east—
a river crosser, muse
lover—lusting for a guardian
angel who can’t be
touched. Live human flesh
before me, he must remain
straight ahead, slightly
elevated—never false.
For Steve
I believe—I don’t
know when—I believe
I will come to accept the world
without you in it. Not there
yet. Nightly haunting of our nightly haunts
awakens me
to these sad refusals and you
not there.
Conversation
dialogue monologue—mute
power down.
To identify where
it all went wrong, when
isolation became a drug
as potent as anything
ingested, when ingesting
became impossible
is
to pretend to be
some kind of god
with flame-retardant wings.
Between trips, she tires
of the asking trees.
Exhausted by the ones without
brilliantly hued questions, the ones
that taunt with a humming
constant in the wind—home is
not the answer
every time, everywhere.
For Steve
Taken from the vault,
it gets warbled, deeper, slurred
when the batteries inside begin to rot
and seep. Recorded
on the west bank
of the Saint Croix River before I knew
what that meant, our conversation
was my monologue—became yours—then
it just stopped.
For Steve
I can’t find you
on the northwest side
of this urban courtyard
without knowing true
north or any other kind
of truth—save you
are too soon gone.
in a god, but the soul, yes. I don’t want
to write about urns
or the contents of any vessel I can’t
submerge in a tank
of amnesia. Whom
I envy is a matter
up for a discussion
I’m not prepared to have. What seemed
too soon becomes too late—the interruption
of beliefs is complete.
For Steve
There’s a voice missing
from this conversation.
The hollow buzz is breaking more
than my ear drums.
She was no femme
fatale, would accept roses
without devouring the stems
whole. Suffering
from acute self
absorption, we bump against
our own reflections
in confusion, believe those faces
to be other
than ourselves. We’re wrong, forever
seeking fabric to conceal
these bruises—ours, theirs.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 