Coming out of retirement to awaken deep
sleepers is one
person’s garbage becoming another
person’s treasure. Blue
mussels and sponges,
black sea bass and mackerel, marine spoils
over a grave of a displaced
life. I cannot count
the number of hours spent riding
Redbirds—the #1, “Last
stop, 242nd Street, Van Cortlandt Park!”
But it’s a lie—it’s a loop,
a ghost of one beneath
City Hall. I can feed off
this ring. I do eat fish.
Mention of mountain
ledges reminds her to speak
of that smashed
pump and its heel
in her street last night, in its gutter
trap this morning. How
do they lose
their mates, a pair severed
and shut down, a high-top hanging
on the old telephone
wire by its one good
lace. Not the first,
nor the last, she crosses
yesterday’s steps
in tomorrow’s unpredictable
boots. She’s gotten this far so far.
Evergreens smelling of the soft
side of an island
catch me sideways
and straight on—I never met
a tree I didn’t like.
I can cough away fright
as long as I remember
what I said about trees.
And the whys of this are tonics
I no longer wish
to mix. I taste,
for the first time
without guilt, the knots
and sighs of pine.
He talked up the stone
through the storm-clenched night.
A noise so round, it became
her rapture.
I need you tonight,
moon, am collapsing in
the curve of you. I found
a wrench in the street this morning.
I need you tonight,
throwing tools
(I am afraid to use)
before me, am reaching to cradle
my own knees—
bruised by misjudgment.
These arms, these fingers are too
stiff. Right tighter, left
looser, bolts land
arranged in a pattern. I found
it could help
reckon through clouds,
stars aligning behind.
Regrets only
raise the lower
tree line equally. Bottom
leaves hidden from sunlight, they die
at the same rate. If I succeed
in not showing up
for another family pageant to appear
before you a doom
eager stranger mouthing
simple questions
about your coniferous forest,
I just might dig up my balance
beam in this black dirt.
Just might please the wind
to respond through your branches overnight.
When I look at the moon, I believe in God
in phases. Because he who rapes the body no
longer rapes thought, I said, “no.”
When I look at the moon, I believe in God in pauses
revealed in shadow giving consent to light.
When a new moon gives back
the whole sky, I’ll begin
to believe this body is mine.
Are you Flaubert’s least
untrue, she won’t dare
ask for fear
your reply might smack
her cheek, lick her lip,
keep her
reaching for more
paint and wall.
I am the scriptio
inferior, I am
the underwriting
of myself. I cannot
wash away the dialogues
I have had with amnesia,
cannot forget
my desire to be seen.
With each alcoholic
palimpsest, I became
powder, irretrievable,
invisible
to myself. With each
reprieve, I am making
a record of what my disease
did not erase.
September rain not really falling,
but has fallen. Clouds mess
with her chance to witness
another civil
twilight. But a western gleam
signals another shift. And
she wishes she could find the hidden white
pine forest, tucked into it
creek, where she would be safe to write
his name in the needle bed
dirt without
getting found out.
But branches get so heavy
this time of year. Hotter
and hotter, later till
that moment when it gets very cool.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 