Camisole or tank,
her words won’t
build a diary or journal
or daily log or dam
to hold back
samples of the river’s
story. Florilegium
or scraps, her mutterings
won’t get recorded
or repeated
or rescued
from virtual trash heaps.
Civil twilight or dusk,
her life and deaths
won’t get defined
any other time.
More potholes
than street left. Build
a canal to channel
all that fatigue. Get out
of the way. Throw open
the heavy doors
to the edge of things. Toss
the balled-up socks
under a sturdy chair.
Read pages from a book
out loud
to a hummingbird—
lingering on each word—
till one of you flies away.
Till you see how that girl’s starting
to happen. She’s slightly
crooked but definitely
happening. It doesn’t matter
what color
the facade tile is. The old
black car is black
with the hood up or down.
Before or after
cocktail hour.
A gull flies so close
to the window
you can see its bent
feathers. Even here
in the middle
it can happen.
Some wonder about Whitman’s heart.
If I had eyes like Simic’s,
the shadow this pen casts
on a wooden table
in the late afternoon sun
would simply erase itself.
Come back in another life,
or at least another day,
as a reanimated limb.
Or a severed pipe
that releases a few
final sputterings of steam.
It’s always a good idea to keep the stray
pieces in a shoebox.
Always worth noting
how the sweat that forms
on my upper lip
might bring me joy.
In the thick
of it, she walks
all the way around
the mess
of road destruction
she almost bought
23 years ago.
It’s not the drizzly
November in her soul.
It’s the breeding lilacs
out of the dead
land, mixing memory
and desire. Can’t be bothered
to dig out
any quotation
marks. It’s the splaying
across mud-caked,
still-drained fountains.
The heat of Sunday
colliding with Monday’s
sleet. The horror
of another desertion
hanging in the sky
like some pink,
pink, pink, pink,
pink moon
hungover from
another decade.
It’s the dread
of reaching
another blank wall
so thickened
even the blood
won’t stain it.
Relief that no one
remembered to unlock
the cellar door.
Between the acts,
I feel the rail vibrate
against the side of my boot.
Without proper
line breaks, there it goes
again. The west side
tries to get a message
through, using some restored
Morse code.
dit dit dit
dah dah dah
dit dit dit
We’re all passengers tonight—
riding out secrets on the rails,
waiting for Mr. Pop to take the stage.
I’ve already gotten vertigo
before it begins,
high up in the gallery circle clouds.
The notes I’ve taken in the dark
during the opening act
are more legible
than anything I write
when the house lights
go up after it’s all over.
And there is no more
except to forget the rose.
Accept the thorn
as part of the pain of living
with a strummed-worn
lyric heart.
“I am a passenger.
I stay under glass. . . .
Over the city’s ripped-back sky.”
—Iggy Pop, “The Passenger”
I laugh aloud to myself
because I can. Diamonds
are funnier than squares,
triangles more gruesome
than the geometry
of our wrecked love.
I’ve gotten close, closer,
too close to the mouth
of a singer as her earring
explodes on stage. Glittery
shrapnel decorates the palm
of my hand. No blood this time.
I see a man
swim with his children,
tossing them in the air,
so they can make a splash
in the world.
I think of my father
and know he is
there underwater
using his gills
to guide me
through an angry ocean
to the nearest sandbar.
I get further
and farther
away. I spend less
time and travel
fewer blocks alone
in the wee hours
hoping to crash
into your imaginary black
jeep with my invisible red
car. I never know the year
or make, don’t care
who chauffeurs you
through the backroads now.
The Stouffer Inn in Public Square
has seen better days.
Goes by a different name.
All the aliases offered
at check-in crumble into
ruin porn, or do they just
ruin porn. Or ruin a poem.
Or have nothing
to contribute
except the image
of Mr. Barney Rubble
ordering room service
in an urban hotel suite.
I write more legibly—
I’m more legible—
in the dark.
It would be a crime
to translate the muffled
trombone of adult voices
in Charlie Brown’s world.
It would be a crime
to dissect any parallels between
Simon and Garfunkel’s folk song “Patterns”
and Uncle Tupelo’s instrumental “Sandusky.”
To make fun of your 14-year-old self
for singing her heart out
to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”
slightly off key.
A crime to villainize
your girlfriend who laughs so hard
at your performance
tears stream down her cheeks. Yours.
Neither of you could know
the beauty in that moment.
A crime to believe
all this organology
will bring back
the lituus or gue.
It would be a crime to continue
cursing the banjo or accordion,
bagpipes or penny whistle,
ukulele or hurdy-gurdy.
To forget
how it felt to play
that harpsichord
when you were 10.
A broken
sound barrier
will heal itself faster
without your help.
The biggest crime
you can commit—
the moment you pin a word on it,
everything falls apart.
Never been to Berlin.
This sunny cold
morning in the alley
behind my front-of-
house apartment life
brings me to tears.
It’s the wind
except when
it isn’t. I used to be
all back of house.
Haven’t lived
in one in decades.
The child who plays
the xylophone won’t fear
the way traditional ballads
get wedged in,
how low
his chant goes,
the way trees bend
to kiss her.
I choose this
morning, this cold, this sun, this empty
room, faulty light fixture, interior wall without
art, this last word
affixed to a kite tail
not unwound, not dusted off, or dragged
through the cellar door up the red stairs yet.
A last word
that bargains for scraps
of wood from a broken fence and bare vine stems
to escape traces of the not literally, but lyrically,
cruel.
Her there
is not his there
is not your there
where a lone tangerine
has come to a full stop
against a street lamp
a few feet
from a pile of dead leaves
and other organic matter.
In there, you see
a detached squirrel
tail you don’t have
the guts to study
up close. You keep
walking and continue
the conversation you’ve begun
having with yourself
under your breath
about the color orange.
You won’t mention tacos
or papayas when you reply.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 