Each time I pull out a calculator
I feel that disapproving
look outweigh your seductive
glint. It doesn’t add up—nothing
does since I discovered you
were gone to the numbers
bonfire beyond. And you’ve been monitoring
the flame for years. Where was I?
I never let you take me
to the Take No Heroes Hotel.
Now I’ve misplaced the directions
but can still prove
I haven’t lost my way. I remember
something about forgetting limits.
Let my lucky 8
get knocked down tonight.
Fountains spout in rain, splatter
in wind. If we had been
lovers, a bitterness would have prevailed
the way it has for all these others.
Might have been threats
left on answering machines:
“If you ever darken
my doorstep again.” Cruel
confessions: “I could see living in the City
but not with you.”
“She laughs more.”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
“I never loved you.”
“This is my O Lucky Man!
This is good-bye.”
Nothing can dismantle the purity
of a death that saves us.
Will drink the new wine. The only conversation
I’ll have this weekend
is with you. If
erythrophobia was fatal, you would have been
a serial killer. Or was it just me?
Not yet vintage, I wanted to be
your only victim. A true enough
kiss to taste the tobacco
before it became my own. I long
to be the person again
who comes along
to stir yours. Though I can’t lick
your ghostly replies, the scent is rich
in pre-fall burning. Hold the leaves.
I enter the quiet
life through a seam
in this wall. First time I heard
your voice was a homecoming. Tell me
if ghosts speak. With a pronounced
accent? Is the language
of flowers reserved for them
the way I’ve reserved myself
for what’s left
of you? Memory is seamless.
Close enough is never enough
to align your hips
with my waist
no matter how long I ride
this train going south. I overshoot
the dream by a zone
or two. It’s up to me
to make adjustments. In your permanent
state—you won’t budge. But
weather is everywhere—weather is
god. I am everywhere wondering where
you’ve gone to weather god.
Only you could get away
with that haircut—you
really didn’t. If I met your brother
in a hallway or on a baseball field
would I see your face, hear your deeply accented
laugh, touch that beard
you shaved off
too soon? Would he know
why this stranger observes
his every move? I continue
to risk being
misunderstood for one of those
moments we used to share before
gravity and all other laws overtook us.
I collect dates
as if they were door
handles. Seek the perfectly shaped one
to build a saudade
life around. Your birth, or death,
or the afternoon you got divorced—
it could be one of those.
But I choose to lock
my eyes on a calendar
with the first day of school
circled in red. Tuesday,
September 2nd, 1980. You looked right
in red. Let the vintage ink
smear. Now I will too.
Always a bit of gravel
or tar stuck to the bottom
of my shoe. Seldom
anyone watching
when I knock it off.
Haven’t studied a piece
of sculpture in over a month.
Longer for a painting
on a wall or dance performance
on some specific site.
I’m using
pretzel formation
to collect images
to keep from losing
my mind—you are gone.
How long do I wallow
in your death?
It was so long ago,
your kisses tasted
like smoke, not mine.
If I die tonight, will we
become lovers by tomorrow
evening? Civil twilight to entwine
two severed spirits. Counting
finally done. To drink or not, new
wine or old—it won’t matter. That age gap
sewn up once and for all. If
I make it till morning, I will continue
to keep a record
of what might have been.
Back then you said I made you long
for your high school days. I wouldn’t go
back there. Yet I yearn
to make you yearn again. But
too much has come to pass—
including your demise.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 