Four Letter Word

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Pride isn’t one. Neither is
addict or humble. Love and have and
rape are. Live but dead too.

Ghosting should be. Memory too.
Forgotten. Missive
and dismissive.

What if I say
vampire and rollercoaster are.
It’s my poem. I can say

whatever I want.
Trust me,
or call me a liar. There’s another.

Here, take some more:

song / deaf / tone / mute / rock / star / road /
kill / sick / well / east / west / make / eyes /
turn / down / sexy / left / wind / tiny / pose /

snug / huge / soft / deep /
seas / leaf / lean / into /
your / kiss / hold / hand / last /

Time is one more.
And poet of course.

Lean into August

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A red rake
propped against a poplar
glows in the late afternoon sun.

The red door
remains shut.
She waits outside. Not ready

to consider
the fallen. One night
it will happen. The door

will open.
He will extend a hand
to offer her

a pair of love-worn
leather ballet slippers
in her size.

Summer ’81

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Arambler's avatarNight & Day Poems of Amy Nash

Engine shut off,
brakes released.

We rolled the teardrop window car
down the driveway
like spies.

Curfew or no curfew,
we discovered our own
way to decode the night.

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Last Word

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“I was much too far out all my life.”
—Stevie Smith
(from “Not Waving but Drowning”)

She works the last
word, worrying it
with her tongue
against the roof
of her mouth.
One more suck, then spits

it out. Chops
it up with a cleaver. Sprinkles
the remains into a manila envelope. Seals
it. Licks

a billion stamps
to stick in a line
on the outside. Mails
it to the moon.

Let it be, please,
let it be
moon.

Grime Writing

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I try to walk a mile on a boardwalk
in your shoes. Trip on your laces.
See your life flash before me. Details of mine
get scrubbed off a stucco wall.

moving moving parental divorce
moving moving starve date rape
moving moving miscarriage obsession
moving addiction overdose on purpose
moving stabilize common law divorce
slipping obligate ram ventilator
about to pause aka slow suicide relief
traveling scarred terrified still moving

I can’t describe what I see of yours.
It’s not my place.
Where is my place?
Help me find my place.

I live in a building
made of saudade and duende
at the bottom
of a concrete hill. Help me

celebrate reverse
graffiti where it belongs.

What’s left. Just a washed-out, deep
female voice that cracks
in the urban wilderness
after a late night rain.

I have leaned over
the flickering flame of your thinking
candle. Am singed without regret.
Help me find mine.

Close

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The air thickens
throughout the day, stays
thick hours after dusk.

The kind of call
that leaves her exhausted
at the edge

of an unguarded rooftop
31 stories above
graffiti-scrubbed pavement.

As the gap between
exhales shrinks
she welcomes the disorientation

not the elevated
burning inside.
31 separate stories

she doesn’t know
how to tell
without interrupting herself.

Claustrophobia in this wide
open space means
only one thing—

utter confinement
within her
own skin.

Merely an optical illusion
that she can touch
the horizon

where the river
and bay meet
with her fingertips.

Merely a dream
that she has only one
way out.

She can open the hatch,
climb down those metal stairs.

Washington Avenue South

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Arambler's avatarNight & Day Poems of Amy Nash

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.

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Sevens in August

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Days in a week, deadly
sins, cardinal
numeral,
the Sabbath,
veils, virgin
daggers,
sacraments

spill onto the eighth
month. Only three
of them can stain
that late summer
block of moments.
Three of them
going back in time:

August 27, 2012
At civil dawn
my father gasps, slips
into death
for infinity.
The saddest relief
shuttles through my veins.

August 7, 2012
Twenty days before
I lose my father,
a rupture
inside your head
kills you. You see infinity.
Return to this.

And the third one
in another century:

August 17, 1980
In a half
circle, friends
drink beer
in your family’s kitchen
the night our eyes
first meet.

Never
mind
infinity,
time
collapses
urgently,
immediately.

We go
forward, backward, sideways
in a trance—
desperate to remember
how it feels to be so young,
to still believe
we are immortal.

Let Us Go Then

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Objects:
Our dead friend
moves our limbs, our mouths,
our lids, our hearts.
Marionettes and
so much more.
He releases our strings
simultaneously. Knows
it’s futile to fight the laws
of physics
even from his side.

Subjects:
Despite the forecast,
rain begins to slap
awake an etherized sky.
Our skin protects
those young spies
dressed in our eyes
testing our voices
as they prepare
to go.

You and I—
none of anyone else’s
goddamn business.
Never mind the mermaids,
we’ve gotten so far
beyond the bath.

Note: partially inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”