No time to mourn, to encounter
rubble in a hole
before retail monster walls
rise above. Dismantling
December air, live
instruments and raw
voices not welcome
in this symmetrical disaster.
Uptown bans all scars.
Day 2,580
Residue cadence over steel,
chilled, is a drink
she would sip
on cold nights to remind
him how she could look
when not trying
to be so permanent. The seep
continues beneath
frozen surfaces—silently.
Reify
Turn a soccer ball inside
out. Make a purse. Hang acetate
images of typewriters
from your ears. See the man
(the top of his head cropped
off) with a smoke
dangling
from his mouth in a print
on that wall in this café
where you can
no longer smoke. Make
a clutch with your lips. Try
not to cry out
those same old words. I’ve tried
this before—difficult but
not impossible to take shape
in warmed hands.
Walden Ripple Effect
Until she loses herself
to light in truncation,
to upside down black and
white photos of bridges—
some smiles do turn
down—till then, she will not
find herself
having faith in those infinite
relations and figure eights
swooning over sidewalks.
Taking the Cure from the Pennsylvania Wood
She cannot resist the slate
surface of your skin strengthening
the faith in hers. The floor reverberates
with the heartbeat of a hummingbird
she sees in the corner
of the sky she forgot to touch.
The scent of rain falling on slate
draws her to you. In her faltering, she believes
the echoes will never smell
this sweet again. She cannot see
the hummingbird but knows she heard
its hunger spill over the deck. Recycled
boards stack up to the ceiling,
broken open
by diamond-shaped clerestory windows.
She’s not cheating,
she’s using her resources. The black stone
path of possibility shrinks at the edge
of her thought. Purple gems block the gray
light. You are free to live
with her beside the ocean now
that the sun has settled down. And the wind will smash
the glass panes into fragments
of salted lies—a beautiful disaster.
Ignition (Day 2,584)
A trough to fill
with sand and water. An army
to protect our beeswax
block of candle. The thing itself
is worth saving
till that moment
our wick heads appear
to coax relief
from concentrating
too much before
dinner guests arrive, their boots
caked in glorious earth.
Wick
I could be tied up, could
hide in this thick
mass, dictating the time
it will take
to self consume
a trail into tilted shadows. I could
be barley twisted
burning at both ends
of aroma’s blocking. Or, I could
become intoxicated
by this power to refuse
devotion visible
against a snuffer’s insides.
Onion Peel (Day 2,582)
A nose gets cut. Bandaged.
His nose. Not for me
to know how. He does bleed
real blood to match
the true color of his song.
I don’t know how. All bodies
frighten me
with their precious mechanisms.
The way they break down—
His, mine. It can be
too much to bear. My desire
drains blue.
Letter to a Young Alcoholic
When I was you, I was
still drinking
from a fountain on the edge
of some urban park. I was
a city in foreclosure
from itself. You are a better you
than me. I can wear my sidewalks
with pride today, but the night
once stole my stroll
towards the dry well, sand
and twigs left to clog the gutters
leading to my heart. Would you want to be
me, would you sip from my cup?
Freight Lined
From stifling coolness
within a parking garage,
from the graphite transfer sound
of a freight elevator shifting floors,
from the deliberate stride
of his black work boots—echo
his escape, his eyes,
three lines.
He motions the wall to tumble,
telephone wires to tense outside
a window, a barricade
withdrawn. He can no longer conceal,
wills stasis to crumble
into being, the outsized beauty
of his surround
crates toward a red bird sky.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 