Your big sister runs
to meet you
the way my big sister ran
down the driveway
to tell me the news
when your father was born.
Some broken chain
link fences
are mended overnight
while we sleep.
Some cynicism
can be cured.
Leo—you are a healer
one day into it.
How many moons—no—
how many movies—no—
how many planetariums—no—wait—
how many drinks
does it take
to adjust to the dark?
Eyes open or shut.
for Sheri
She knows every inch of the dock,
every splinter, barnacle,
hurricane-spared stilt.
It is not a plank. It’s just where she walks.
And she knows how to dive,
has been doing it for years.
No easing shore side into the wash for her,
she plunges in and is used to it
before others wake.
This is underworld—closets, caves, shelves,
trenches, forests, hydromedusa, brittle
stars, Painlevé’s camera. This is where she should live—
she who in her heart is a sponge
is a sponge is a sponge.
To lay out to dry, to become exposed
to air, the rising sun. It is her death
to be before all of you. She will never work a room,
works the ocean floor
for all it’s worth.
Metal crushes metal, emergency sirens approach closer
and closer. A muffled distortion
underwater. Leave her uncontained.
She would rather synchronize her own sculls outside a tank
than be confounded by a mirage of roses
she can’t reach without a body.
The first adaptive
reusers before
it became trendy
to convert a shoe
box into,
well, anything
besides a shoe
box. A covered bridge
into an amphitheater
for Amish punk gigs. A Dairy
Queen into a library
that houses reels
of documentary films
and mysterious microfiche. Summer
mansion into convent into
venue for flying
garters and bouquets.
Do they still do that?
No vacancy
chain. Everyone’s hoteling
it now. Or, hot desking
without reservation.
Anything to protect the soft abdomen
from invaders.
Graffiti grief guardian
angel Atlantic
Ocean Big Sur Book
of Blues love lyric
Martha’s Vineyard memory
poetry recover recovery
recycle reprieve roots
saudade silence sky-
way soul take
no heroes hotel the Bronx
train truth
urban weather
Seeps into the foundation. Inks
its way through sand, clay, silt, even
into a blessed sinkhole.
The color of a Redbird before
it became a reef
off the Slaughter
Beach coast. The need for sacrifice
grows so great. Infestation
an epidemic. All those heroes
on the loose, out of control.
No more illusions of steering
this dinghy ashore in the storm.
It’s going to rock; I’m going to remain
the name on its port side. It won’t fade away.
A skyway morning
to you. Did you
invent it?
Not the skyway,
not the morning,
the night.
A silk green cigar
smoking jacket, striped
trousers cut off
below the knees, wind
chill kind of evening.
I would ask
your mother what time
of day you arrived
if I met her.
They have the same
name. Our mothers.
Remember that part.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 45 trips to carry that many people.
Windows in an exposed brick wall leave her
suspicious. Was there another
floor in here once? Guessing about before
is her new purpose.
And she believes
in ghosts and sprites and even a mermaid
that might swim beneath floor boards
of an old fish-packing plant on the end
of a wharf. Those photos
mounted on its façade are real.
Eva, Mary, Bea, Frances—you are
real. And Almeda, your image
destroyed by storms crashing
into the harbor, you are beyond.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 