PUBLICATION READING
SubText Bookstore, 165 Western Avenue No., St. Paul, MN
7 PM., Saturday, November 9th, 2013
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Poetry, essays about Home
Featured readers include Jill Breckenridge, Tami Mohamed Brown, Wendy Brown-Baez, James Cihlar, Alice Owen Duggan, Margaret Hasse, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Linda Kantner, Julie Landsman, Amy Nash, Ellen Shriner, Cary Waterman, Karen Herseth Wee, Miriam Weinstein
“The Mississippi River, magnetic engines roar,
sad songs keep the devil away.”
—Jay Farrar (Son Volt, “Angel of the Blues”)
These songs
are homecomings.
One—“Angel of the Blues”—
returns me to the roots of true
saudade.
I am New England dirt,
the taste of beets out back.
I am not brownstone—
not urban by birth. I am
still in quarry depth,
the scent of cars rusting beneath.
I am not ocher—not red
iron ore impure. I am sipping
fresh water from a claw-foot tub
turned spring, overflowing
to Bone Lake at dusk
and warm. But I am not
the moon to be collected.
I am not forty jokes memorized—
not working a room,
timing accent and plot. I am
ready to mark this laughter
the colors of a flower bed
against brick. I am the line
drawn purple—blues and reds
of a road map
preparing to fold everything
I am
(except magnetic north) in place.
To calculate the life
expectancy of a book
case, to remember terracotta
dreams, to believe
in old-fashioned raindrops,
to imagine pianos
appearing on parade
in other cities, to be
proud not to have gotten
a tattoo in this town
after all
is to be making it
up as I go along.
Twenty years into this
relocation west
of the Mississippi, I will
become the original
version of Another
Girl, Another Planet.
Just for today, no
cover. And maybe tonight.
And perhaps the next
full moon lighting
up the river’s only
natural falls.
Whoever can write
about home on demand
has never been challenged
by the prospect of losing
its meaning. The place where I was born
holds no promise
of belonging. Have seen it
once since I left at six
months. Where I met my husband
means nothing because
there is no husband. If home is
where you hang
yourself, I can almost call this town
on the Mississippi the place. Almost. But
what about The City? The Atlantic Ocean?
It could be where you build
your own Take No Heroes Hotel
from some abandoned structure
with former lives peaking through.
Everyone has reservations.
A porch no one
can describe wraps
around its house—tightening,
tightening. Hugs
the footprint as a disciple
of home is
where you check in
without a check-out time. Tin
tile ceilings in the two-story
lobby. A triangle
park and a bluff
anchor all activity
in the oceanfront garden. Bonfire
night after night where effigies
of the over-worshipped burn.
What washes ashore below
erases questions and desire
for answers. I could drag
my dinghy across the sand
and know it’s time.
Dilated pupils as the sun sets,
I find my way
home by other means.
My parents met outside
an eye doctor’s office. I’m not looking
for it. Patterns can be broken
especially if
I don’t participate
in the first place. The last place
I would hide
in might be so cold.
Home is in the pronunciation.
In this silence,
I belong nowhere—everywhere
could be my first word.
Fear ghosts,
god, graffiti, guardian
angels, and
home.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 