Frogs dart across moist areas of a tended path,
grasshoppers take the dry,
beavers’ work evident by the dead
trees in a still pond—no sign
of the maker, everywhere there.
I step into another woman’s childhood landscape
and can smell my own
in this boathouse on a lake. Fresh
or salt water, it floats. Nothing gets trapped underfoot.
I don’t believe in martyrs,
don’t always believe
my eyes. It’s the primary colors.
They endanger me
with their solid, waiverless
stairs to nowhere better
in black and white. Dirty
snow or marble, maybe
we did meet once before
this day that tips
toward the melt. What if
we were lovers? What
does that make us
now that the boisterous
hues of another summer
have bled away
their urgency? I don’t need
to teach you the difference
between complementary
and complimentary. “How lovely
you look beside me
on this wheel—that cochineal becomes you,
even against his brown,” the yellow says
to the red. I might start
to believe in plastic orange
picks scattered in the street.
And I might pick one up for you
and who you were before.
For MJN crossing beneath,
for NYC connecting across,
for The Brooklyn Bridge rescue working destiny
Advance your vantage
point,
this bridge,
collapse your facade of steel,
your gutted concrete floor.
Collide your bridge maker
with mine,
collage your instinctive hand
over mouth with my eyes shut,
vocal chords spewing forth—
a scream
a void
to coalesce to convalesce
on one bridge
of material unidentifiable yet.
Coordinate the crossing,
bare feet, dust, and ash caked faces
no veil could protect,
suits meaningless,
ties undone
till they become arms swaying,
a human chain
of events.
A human behavior changing
never
no way
when
now
your bridge maker, mine,
his, hers.
They designed bridges
to be passageways.
Make them destinations
to be good to get no further
than this, this bridge
cannot be
a boundary
because bridges connect.
It is still where it has been,
the destination stands
between these pedestrian elevating towers
still here.
Welcome to the inn
where no reservations are taken, where
possession is one quarter, obsession
one more,
the other half
a lifetime spent designing the perfect
room where relinquishment adorns
each and every square foot of space
to walk
away from each and every hero
you took, she took, he took,
we all took,
save ourselves. Welcome
to the color
of the first suit you swam in,
to the sound
of the first dive you performed. Welcome
to the taste
of the first sea scallop you craved, to the touch
of the first porch
you danced upon—it is,
always was,
The Take No Heroes Hotel
where we belong.
What the storm asserted
the wave to lash,
what the hull cracking
separated bow from stern forever,
what settled to ocean floor slowly
will reconstitute salvaged treasure.
If two people
someday dive into our wreck—
and they will—to collect
our splintered mass
of a life gone askew,
piece by piece,
what they bring to the surface,
what they examine
will be the new us,
will be a restoration,
regeneration, the religion of us
carted to the surface
alive in their palms.
She seeks a childhood face
along the East Bank, diverted and spilled onto
an empty road, old railroad
tracks framing its riverside.
That this widening band of water flowing south
could be the same river
as the tiny channel
she waded through yesterday up north,
that this unsalted navigational pulse
could reckon with her North Atlantic bias
could all be a signal
calling her to pause here
behind a brick building in an old rail yard
(only a slice of river visible) to see how
no other word, even in this midst,
besides saudade will do.
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.
Still pretending
to be a guest
in her own city, she reads a tourist
brochure pretending
it is a magazine.
She squints to see
how out of focus
home can become. An entire page
devoted to gentlemen’s clubs.
She doesn’t work it
so much less so each year
as she passes from eligible, young desirable
to this: a visitor
wise enough to know
when to refocus, when
what fades is what goes
on display, passing through
on out. Every town’s got to have a place
to see naked girls
going out of focus
in the dark. Still, she imagines living
in a hotel, turns the page, what else
have you got, city?
She is certain her mouth,
painted cerise,
will not wear away
too soon. She may
become all lips
without limbs, without
a neck, without a torso.
She would still dip
this color, with certainty,
to her brush.
Long before
day one
there was
this painted mouth:
Lipstick in hand,
she drew her mouth
perfectly without looking.
Later, watching herself
be an artist,
her lips canvas,
she drew a cinnabar moth,
not a kiss.
Years back
my mother owned
a car named Lucifer.
And you wonder why I refuse
to drive.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 