If blank walls are criminal, he’ll obey
the law with a spray can
till he needs a place to sleep. Till walls
become doors that open
onto back alleys
where the sun can’t get in. The spoon
he bends tonight
will be the surface he refuses
to touch at civil dawn. Six degrees
below without hope of a single aubade.
Humor me—let’s pretend
you’re not dead. I’m young
enough to think I can still
drink. To believe you
think about me 30 minutes
before dawn, 30 minutes
after dusk. Not all promises
will be broken. You’ll make me laugh
more than cry. And I’ll see
that ridiculous smile,
those chuckling eyes,
when I can’t stop
writing these poems
about a dead man.
Flip-flopping between Kerouac,
Miller, Jeffers, Ferlinghetti, and me, she
seeks an answer
to her female question:
Why!
It’s a zigzag route—a skyway
network with real weather
leaking in. She takes it
again and again: bank
to bank, civil
dawn to civil
dusk, Atlantic
to Pacific, instrumental
to spoken
word, digital
to analog, fold-out
to GPS, root
cellar to high
rise green
roof, concave
to convex, at rest
to in motion, addiction
to rejection, black
butterfly to ancient
barnacle, female
to male—what was she thinking
asking them to ask me? She should have
left it at the river. Either side
of the falls would do.
Hollow women seek distractions
in you. Numbed
into summer is no way
to look at the moon
each night. That hill won’t hold
all these heavy
limbs and lids. I’ll be the one
to rebel—I don’t want
to be distracted. Let me suck
sustenance from soma goblets
before another civil dawn.
My weakest hours
come too bright, too central,
too exposed—take me
to the blue hour
where I belong between
definitions.
This cusp between
a tint and the taint
is where I’ll find you
counting strings
and deeply dug channels
before dawn ruins the light.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 