This is the first time
I get to see an engine
leave Fire Station #1. A one
alarmer. No more drags
and still I can’t extinguish
those flames swooning
in my head. No smoke
billows out—all in my head.
Out of nowhere the scent
from that bonfire I started
almost twenty years gets retrapped
in nostril cross hairs—stories to be retold.
Music sounds better without
the smoke. I’m the listener,
not the singer. But forgive me
if I mouth his words, even sing along,
as I walk across another skyway bridge
on my way to heightened
exhales. Hums crossing dangerously close
to humiliation—still better than
arrogantly setting
tobacco on fire again.
Didn’t see it
coming—this Zen
sadness over the leaving
you. Fear, anxiety, yes,
even anger over a smokeless
sky. Didn’t know
that last flicker would remind me
so much of him
You were not allowed
up here—that hole
in the carpet couldn’t be
a careless discard
of one of you. A pizza
delivery man exits an elevator
to one of those office towers—can I
smell it? Oregano,
tobacco, the cigarette
that man outside on the corner
was smoking was too sweet
smelling to be
one of you. Old lovers
who were never really friends. A convenience
store becomes like a liquor
depot—no further purpose.
And I can go anywhere now.
“Throw the calendar away—gonna find a jukebox of steel.”
—Jay Farrar, “Jukebox of Steel”
Don’t ask me to set a date,
to plan my release
from this worn Sisyphean trail—
uphill with no benefits. I only know
how to drop
it,
put my flame
to other things. By sudden impulse,
I hear a message transmitted
where I thought
communication was shot. God
wears new clothes.
I’ll write everything down
so I can forget
you and how you were my last
smoking one, my last
lover to take flame
so literally, the one daily
companion left to invite me
to climb those pariah stairs. It’s time
to put you in the cupboard
behind those pans I never use.
The only things left to shake
are these hands—then they’ll quit too.
“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.
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.
“She knew the grammar of least motion.”
—Theodore Roethke, from “The Dream”
These curling waters won’t freeze
even when a spillway channel
halts in its purpose. It’s a long way
to the bayou
from here. Dark chocolate
could almost fuel us
on this journey
to a mouth with many tongues—a roof
all but blown away.
The details have begun
to fade—was it June
or July? New York or
Cleveland? Who were you
opening for? Was a body
of water involved? I could sprinkle
these memory ashes
downstream into the river
deceit. The truth:
I haven’t forgotten even one
detail. Down to the pocket
in my dress, later chewed and torn
by an innocent Airedale.
The truth? Do memories drown
when they’ve served their purpose?
Is two decades long enough?
What if they float?
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 