“Love’s a Spanish word to be sung.”
—Jay Farrar (Son Volt, from the song “Brick Walls”)
He would live in a pop-up
hotel, watch water
drain from a claw
foot tub, walk
the length of his own city
without a license. Not
to speak
a single word
for ten days and use
that vacant space
to recall each
and every train
he’s boarded. In English,
it all hinges
on a Rio Red 747.
Dog-eared becomes
a symbol, a brand, that act
of defilement your grandmother
warned you about. Who remembers
where they were? The angle
they approached the image from? Who
remembers which image? To recall
the young woman nodding off
next to you in a packed auditorium,
the color of the floor
beneath your feet, how her head
bobbed and drooped
toward her man, then you
(no drool) is
to be
a bookmark floating
on an liquid crystal display sea.
The height of the podium,
the last thing you drank
before entering the ball
room. The play
of words suspended
from an unidentifiable drop
ceiling before they settle
onto a page—folding down
a top edge of translucent
thought. Dog-eared.
I can almost taste
the snow—nothing
good ever comes
from that. A late March double
espresso might neutralize
the palate. Might
not. A family
reunion in August resuscitated
to honor my father. I
never went when he was
alive. How can I
go now? August is
the month of grand
gestures, spiritual releases.
August is
the month he left
us. Yes, I told him
he could let go, but
how could I know
what it would be like
to live in a world without
his heart beating
in it? August is the month
when water
falling majesty just
might return.
This one isn’t talking
into his cell—
he’s just talking
to himself. The first day
of spring and a Caution—
Falling Ice sign
still stands outside
the crime lab. Notable
wind chill and not a blade
of grass to be seen
anywhere outdoors. Inside
the skyway linked
towers, little plots
sprout everywhere.
The morning’s unexcused
absence can lead to another,
then another, and
still another till
truncated days are
all we get. Our children’s
children will dream of civil
dawn the way we long
for a pristine shoreline, pine
forest, subway wall, guitar
riff. Saudade
for time of day
as much as for a place
or soul we never knew
renders us
human all over again.
To read upside
down even for an hour
without laughing
out loud, to spell out
all acronyms
subject to interpretation,
to whisper
so loudly periods explode
is to become a modern
dancer who courts
her shadow
when the coast is clear.
All the world’s
an ice rink
this morning before
the sun (no one can see
through freezing rain
and fear) fully rises. Where
did it go
when these bones began
to break and drop
to the lacquered
ground? Whose bones
will replace those
missing from this new silence?
I have become a double
shot espresso to make
the transition from afternoon
to evening smooth. To become civil
twilight burning full
force through
late winter urges
me onward. March’s
sooty snow be damned.
Plastic hotel room
key cards—two of them—left
in her purse. Everything
express, everything
virtual. Where does reality
slide in and out
to open ourselves
to the image of a framed
painting of a woman
who holds a chain—silver
plated—from which her idea
of home dangles? In suspension,
her slender arms wind horizontally
as a marionette
from another era. It is another era
where photorealistic pictures
with paint thick as a thief’s
rubber sole hang in the balance.
Relief that she is not
attending the regional pest
management conference
here in town
is not enough.
Sipping black coffee
in a refurbished hotel lobby
four blocks
from her apartment
is not enough.
Scribbling another reminder
note on a Post-It
not to forget PJs,
business cards, mouth wash
could be. Checking
the progress of that snowstorm
hovering over Boston
every 15 minutes
not likely. Exhaling
absolutely without question.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 