Once sprung, it builds
its own roads. She may dig
detours with a felt
tip. She might believe
she’s in control.
And she could claim
credit for the resulting map.
But it’s never complete
till you arrive
(with you over there, and you,
all of you) to mess
with the lines.
Long or short, nothing
must be out of place. Clipped
corners in love
with a raked center. The scent
of six o’clock bells
in the cold dark must trail
off just so. Just so
this mouth doesn’t lose
its absolute shape.
She cannot know the words
she may shout
in her sleep—a sleep
she journeys to alone,
whether or not
she is alone in a room.
Her cat won’t tell. She can
make it up: “Please don’t stop
singing.” Or: “I’m falling
free, please don’t
catch me.” Or: “No, no, no.”
Or: “Yes, yes, yes.” Or,
she can let it be
a mystery, the cat
slipping into another room,
her arms resting overhead.
A congestion takes
time to clear
away stale ideas. Would it
really be the end
of the world to be
a new
soul. With slow
moving ovals
to louse
up patterns without.
I was born
funny
looking, looking
to make my way
with a simple trick—
a mouth shaped
downward to laugh,
upward to sob, and nothing
in between. Who knows
if that part
really matters.
When the surface below
her feet can no longer be
trusted and she can no longer hold
in that scream, sweat and fever break
before unsuspecting eyes. What happens
to old souls at middle
age? She lost hers
in the bottom of a bottle
of Rioja, a fermenting worm hoarding
all visionary movement in its ringed
pulse, only recovered
it in the past decade. Is it preserved
or a witness
to exquisite decay? Relax,
roll with it, let your timbre
do its catch and release. But, no,
she can’t. She’s not ready to expose that worm
to its reflection in the glass
floor. She still believes
a ceiling would be a better prop.
She can drop the music
on ice—it won’t
break apart
the way she hopes her worry
stone strokes might. Cracks
visible on a surface
take time to register inside
her. Continuity
isn’t hers to give away.
Looking at this painting backwards,
the poet begins
to see how not
to end, how the center holds
only recycled reflections of a soul. More
will be revealed, still
a nuisance theme, runs
rampant in reds and golds inside
closed lids. And then there’s that
damn song and the guy who sings it—how
it wrote him inside
out. Was it? It was
this torched. Turn it
over with eyes at rest
Meaning can’t be met
at the station. It floats over tracks
and erases bridges made derelict overnight.
Water’s
constant motion
from my city to yours
can’t be stopped by ice concealing
the want.
This eye encased
in brick—not a bearing
wall but for show. This eye
above
the bar before me
is not staring down but straight
ahead till remodeling
becomes
a plan. And I wait around
another corner. Some string
quartet plays in another room. Not
what I’m waiting for.
A march
of Absolut bottles—Apeach, Kurant,
Mandrin, Mango, Pears, Peppar, Raspberri,
Ruby Red. Someone has taken
the time to line them up in alphabetical
order. Not
what I’m waiting for. I would never wait
for the bottle—the bottle would never wait
for me. That one’s over. This one
is an outpouring
of dark song—always worth it.
Always an incurable
gaze, mine.
Subversive gardening, I am
an urban vine unwilling
to be tethered to one person’s possession.
I will not become
part of anyone’s landscape
of ownership dispute. I will
grow as my environment allows. I will
become a grubby urban palimpsest
to be layered upon by a future you and me.
Note: John Ashbery refers to grubby urban palimpsests in his book Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987, ed. David Bergman (Knopf, 1989).
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 