A clue
you are digging
your own grave in the dark—
this dirt under your fingernails
exposed.
Carp Queen
I am her
royal highness perched low
on the Minnesota River’s north
bank. A beer cooler
my throne, a grain
elevator screeching
over the mucky muck
water cheers me on. My fishermen
hook big
flapping bottom
feeders, then hand me
one of their poles, and I bend
to pull the line
taut, lower, repeat,
the rod steadied against my royal blue
bibbed breasts. This battle becomes
the day’s drama—
it against me, the queen
23 times its size. Finally,
when I do pull it ashore,
a blotch of red in its gill,
one of my fishermen attends
to its release, the needle
nose pliers freeing it
unharmed—give or take
a lifetime of post
traumatic stress
disordering its course. I am
the carp queen sculling
the air with a regal wave
to the boys on a barge
passing before us on this sweaty river.
I hear their megaphone
pleas for me
to flee my banked fleet. But
even as I flirt
with those towing
cargo (be it soybean
or grain or freeze dried
myths) to the Mississippi River
bound for Red Wing, Rock
Island, Saint Louis, Ripley,
Natchez, New Orleans, somewhere
in between, my heart belongs
to these charming men seeking
the biggest carp, the better quip
to pass another Saturday
too hot for its own Minnesota
not so nice. They remind me. Her highness
is not so high
left alone on her portable perch, potable contents
sealed tight inside for now. Her highness
is referring to herself
in the third person again.
Before Swimming Season
For MJ
A duck nest beside an unpumped pool,
debris-laden, a feathered inn.
A feline banquet surrounds the swill,
the outdoor plumber’s late again.
An expansive tarp buckles in the mix,
ducklings gone from view, a child slips.
Three sisters twist their braids into rope,
shaking debris from the little one’s throat,
survivors are taking their first flight.
Metamorphosis in Two Spheres
A dime in the street
becomes two touching
a flatness tires can’t roll
away. Infinity sleeps outside
before summer solstice
in the rain. With morning, it rises
to become a figure eight
on air—hold the ice.
Keep going, dare
ascendance and serifs. By midday,
it just might become
this ampersand above
tree canopies flirting
with young gulls and moths.
Vinyl
Realizing with relief
she can’t hug
a voice, she is safe
from self-harm.
Heights (Day 2,304)
And I know I will
die. It could be now. How
will I lift this foot?
And I don’t, and I do.
Stairs to an elevated pedestrian
bridge over nine lanes
of highway. The linking flight
between two floors
within an office, a red
ladder against that brick
wall. A green one
in a park that’s crumbling
faster than I can reach
the landing—any one over
water or a creek’s dry
well. I’ll never be
a man on a wire,
a woman ready
to run for help
when he falls.
It’s a healthy one—this fear.
Washington Avenue South
Before the street made sense, became a boulevard
with flower beds and urban strength
trees, she entered
the roadhouse to seep
into wood. To be
the end. It is
gone. She is
not. Up the long block—a lengthening
stretch of cars, do not
honk, go fast, poets cling
to their voices under beams
compressing breath and scars.
Mount
Glass poems collect
dust in a case
that used to hold
taxidermy fodder.
It could be her head
(not the stuffed bird’s) this time
that flies off—this night
could be the one
she witnesses outside first
before locking herself back in.
Green Fuse
You buy a plant you cannot
name, you name a flower
you have not seen. A crimson whim
drives the force
to tether your ignorance upon your palms,
deep into your nails.
Press the leaves that fall from portage
into the book you call your current read.
Close the book
that gives you nothing now,
offers more pressure than impression
in its present function at hand.
A private garden in Georgia
with all of its growth labeled just for you,
is the out-of-town passerby’s exaltation
the way a public arboretum exists to preserve,
educate, enhance,
sector unbiased. You may believe
because the park where you seek shelter
is a mountain of sod,
waiting for a landscape architect’s next set of drawings,
a city’s next referendum. A place
you sought for safe haven,
is a scam, a sign, a curse. But you are still the one
who does not know the name
of the plant hanging ruby rich
above your porch rail,
still the one who could knock her fists against a board,
an inner ear to loosen a level plane,
a balance beam,
still the one from the clutches
of teeter-totter time ago.
Shape of Angels
If convening for each age
and never laying down to die,
if merely slipping into new clothes
and never changing what they cloak,
this famous convention would have stormed
the Take No Heroes Hotel,
would be resting in its suites by now. No,
there are nights
when the fullest moon will not offer
even the dimmest halo,
when the double-jointed,
alone crowd the light.
And with the sky so near,
your ear pressed to the wall,
you will hear the din—
a convention of devilish nymphs scratch high
in the mountains. Never-extinct, they
crunch other suns between their teeth.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 