With original denim
colored eyes
still seeking,
she puts her obsession with death
of punk music
to rest. Silent influences
to speak of
alone together. Another sip
of a double shot
espresso in a true demitasse
cup to stay—
and so she loves
more than one city
these days. No ranking. Even in April
sleet and slush, she leans
toward jean not leather
jackets. But still leather
boots over canvas flats.
Swan boats
Arthur Fiedler
Logan Sumner Tunnel
The Phoenix Newbury Comics
Fenway
Maiden. She sank 101 years ago today,
or had started to sink. My father taught me
how to swim in a bay
off a rocky beach. He taught me
how to tie my shoes on porch steps
that spilled onto those rocks—though he said
I taught myself. I never sank
all the way to the bottom.
I’ve always managed to swim
ashore. So many to thank. I could not
have done it by myself.
It’s 9 am
on a Saturday
in April, do you know where
your Please
Kill Me t-shirt
is? Who you were
with the first time
you listened to Chronic
Town all the way through?
Gardening at night
is not always as romantic
as it seems. Mumbling may be
a gift of genius,
or merely of the arrogant
camouflaging an inferiority
complex the size of a bull’s eye
on that t-shirt
in XXXL. Or, it could all be
a joke—the way
we equate enunciating
with the truth.
Grace. A chess game indoors
could have been outside in
spring snow if it was
a bigger place
with more pocket parks. But here
everything stays
insulated. A punk jabbing
at the inside mechanisms
of my mind. In a dream,
the old New York employer
has all but shutdown. An empire
of books gets streamlined. Everyone
has moved
on. Even those who haven’t
when I wake will be gone.
Night falls
late on this snow—
too late to mirror breath
or invite sky humming beneath
its sheen.
Twenty years ago when she thought she would live
forever, she tried to cut it
short. Twenty years later, she’s doing all she can
to preserve each daily miracle. Joy
Division was rattling in
her head: “She’s Lost Control.” Who knows what
the Roadhouse jukebox
was pumping out. It was Neil Young who awakened her
with a “Harvest Moon”
in April to a morning she didn’t know she would want
to know. Some dates are best
forgotten. She’s the lucky one who gets to remember the long play.
Dumptruck sings “Get off
my island.” Used to be
my refrain even though
I’ve always known no one
(especially me) can really own
it. Just missed going to college
with one Dumptrucker. Shared a cab
from the Lower East Side to Prospect Heights
early one Sunday morning with another.
An oral history gets written
down. What gets lost
in translation becomes ghost
poems that only recite
themselves under waxing
crescent moons. But when they do,
you can hear them echo
up freshly rained-on empty streets
with titles like “urban spring” and “long live
the lighthouse keeper.”
Still bare from a long winter, my favorite
tree has grown
crazier than I remember. One wildly long branch
reaches across the street
to shake hands with its fellow elder
on the block. Just one
south of the CC Club. I never enter
that darkness anymore. Someone leaves
a black teapot on top
of a recycle bin—yes or no? Do it.
Knock it in. Everything
deserves a second chance.
I blush to think
how I did examine
that photo of you
naked. In the privacy
of my apartment. Alone.
Always alone there,
here, for now for however
long. Long enough
to defrost the freezer
on a schedule. My therapist
says go
online, experiment, be
a tease, say no. I
say no
to that. I think
I should—no, I fear
I should have no
one to tease. Could I
tease you for a night?
Could I be the smile
in Minnesota
for you? Is that meeting
in Theatre 80 on Saint Marks Place
where the original
punks who did not die go to not die?
I’ll never say. I’m one too.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 