She sounds like
someone else. Looks different. Philosophies
of life in bas-relief—
especially death. Can you fingerprint
a voice? The deeper
it goes, the more I listen
for other songbirds
gliding across plains.
death
Johnny Becomes You
No one else called you Lester. No one knows
I broke your typewriter—
save you. Who will
call me
Esther now? I see the jumbled
mass of timber holding up the Grain
Belt billboard sign. It doesn’t change
even when the river below breaks
open its mid-sigh
pause after months
of near death
threats. This city moves
to a different cadence
in a dye color you and I
could never find
for that windbreaker
that got left behind. On a wooden stoop
behind a cobbler’s shop.
Everybody’s got to work.
The banging has stopped
for you. For me, I’m left holding
jokes no one else gets—inside out.
Love Death Unfurl
“And so, every building we have walked through begins to walk through other buildings.”
—Colum McCann, from his essay “An Imagined Elsewhere: The City of Cities” accompanying Matteo Pericoli’s World Unfurled
As far as she knows, he is the first
to go. Others may have
exited too—she can’t monitor
all egresses, all trap doors
lovers walk on, all the hot air
balloons that crash
into lagoons and straits.
Better to travel on foot
with skyway vision in January,
bridge perspective come spring.
That he has missed two seasons
already, will never feel the first
blast of warm euphoria
in Minnesota again—this is not
a spinster’s regret.
Related to Ladders
A relief to see no parade
tonight, she still wants
to ask that man who eats
an apple as he exits
a parking ramp
if it’s bad
luck to walk in front
of a fire station’s garage
doors each morning,
then night. If the red light
means anything. If
he has a former lover
who has died too.
The Best Thing To Do
To lift each piece
of mismatched furniture
to sweep beneath
is a risk
to find faith
in the ability to face
the ache and relief
and horror and
acceptance of a mystery
tragically solved.
October Grief
Dust in a machine,
overheated thoughts trigger
emergency shutdowns. Zigzag
is not a place. This is
the only place
where rain comes in threads
that won’t dissolve
the glue she uses
to hold what’s left
of her together.
Shall We Dance?
For Steve and Colin
We three who sit in a tattered, sprung black
booth on the non-music side
ask
ourselves this. The confusion—
liver or lives, ecstasy
from a handful of pills or arms
dropping
from an invisible burden. It would kill
off two, would leave
the third alone
to hold the hollows
of an answer together
with her own hug
she wraps around herself.
Day 2,901
No mapping
exercise, no
diapason, geometric
shape speaking to me
while I sleep
will bring him back. No
longer in medias res, he
took the wrong detour
and never recovered
his footing.
Gro
For Steve
I believe—I don’t
know when—I believe
I will come to accept the world
without you in it. Not there
yet. Nightly haunting of our nightly haunts
awakens me
to these sad refusals and you
not there.
No More Legend
Conversation
dialogue monologue—mute
power down.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 