Each dress is a poem
I didn’t write. Wish
I did. Take them off
with care. Each one
must keep its shape
to remind me
I could be real.
EGO (Day 2,272)
“How describe the world seen without a self?”
—Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Enter this garden
of obsession. Edge growth
out to fill beds
with worry
stones. Ease your way
from grimaces to oval
reflection pools. Exit
through this iron gate
to a new order where
you might begin to see how
there could be a world
without the self.
Non-Refundable
She wants to scream
into another night she won’t enter—
let there be no more day ones,
let this fear dissolve
with chalk on a sidewalk
in the rain
to keep this disease quiet
straight on till morning.
So many conditions to be met
after dark. She pretends to be a stranger
when a drunken shadow approaches—
it’s the only thing left to do.
Outside the Fence
Through galvanized steel diamonds,
we exchange words. I can almost feel
your breath brush off
this skin I wear. As much as I want
that zinc and wire to dissolve
so I can touch your blues harp marred lips,
please don’t sing them to pieces.
I need you
to disappear
into the curve of your unspoken
phrases, so I can continue
to be blown away
with these tree branches breaking against night.
Mississippi Burden
Release me
from these lucid dreams. The more
I try to control the mind
toward a reencounter with you in a garden
level coffee bar, the less
I know about sleeping
flowers on this bluff
overlooking the confluence
of two rivers. What gets tended
in the dark could grow
into more than what I believe, a grace
over dogma rising
from sandy soil. I am carrying fear
in a basket my ancestral women transported
with time on their heads, by turns, to reach the big
river, to spill
the contents into turbulent waters,
to no longer believe in
the terror of the flood, the promise
of drought. So far, I am not
balancing it
on my head, but on my left hip
below the heart. I’m still hoping
you’ll catch my right
to pull me into your current, to take everything
from me, so I have nothing left
to drop.
RSVP
The more she intends
to appear, the less
likely she will. Her
disorder does not translate
well. This is not commentary, this is
fear. She tricks herself into
showing up for the next
inhale, then the exhale will
follow, no questions asked. Except
one. An aside.
Kettle On
The back burner’s blue
flame in this dark is too blue
to become my personal amethyst—
too close to scorched red metal
not to be.
Day 1,256
She dreams of exploding
into tiny corkscrews
of stained purple paper
dropping onto a wooden floor.
She wishes she could inspire you
to rage over the mess.
She cannot understand
how you might sweep away
or ignore the color
she believes she might become
if only she could break open
her relationship to trees.
Caryatid’s Offering
Suffering gratitude is a burden
she will carry from the well
to the fire in a vessel
upon her shoulders—
understanding spilling
like new wine speaking
in tongues to the warmed earth.
She endures the gift exchange
of her clan, a ruby-colored cloth
passed between women till one declares
it will be torn
into a deck of cards
made of erotic fiber.
Small swatches for young men
to pick from, each choosing
randomly until one last piece
is left for the one who has waited
to learn love
with the woman who witnesses
an exquisite act of destruction
in every gift there is.
No Equivalent
In English. The sea is a false promise
of return,
ebb and flow,
rhythmic come and go,
the Portuguese fisherman’s saudade,
the Korean cane cutter’s han,
the American salesman building a heartland,
longing for salt and brine
he has never known.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 