No time to explore
the lobby so make it
up as you charge
down the back stair
well. A dry one.
Not a drunk in sight. No mirrors
or reflective glass
walls to encase you
in your own reprieve
from the next flood. A drought
at another bottom. You’ve read
the views bind guests
to spells of stillness.
It’s not the pause
in your story. Are you
that delusional, or are you the real
omnipotent narrator come to quell
the intrusive one?
That between hotel rooms
doorway, loop hole
in my story, rarely used,
opens questions
to the last fading
balcony light. Is it
one door or two? If one,
does it lock
on both sides? If on
only one, who chooses who
gets to hold the key?
Would it be you? Would it be me?
Would it be the concierge
deciding if it’s a good night
for matchmaking? Do we fit
his image of accidental lovers,
or would he be wicked
in his plotting domestic traveling
disturbance? Or perhaps he just wants
to see what could happen—lets it drop
into the can
without remembering if
he secured us in or out,
or not at all.
Roadkill in black
eyeliner walks
through rain-soaked streets.
Some drift ghosted back
into shaken
frames, the brittle
bone long since crushed
and brushed off. Others resurrect
their posture in long black
boots to strut tall
toward their new hero
worship—could be shadow
dancing, could be a spiritual
awakening to a higher
burn of wheels over the real man
hole concealing their souls.
To eat lemon
cake with a spoon,
to dream of walking on
that bridge with you
(not beneath it
in a tourist vessel),
to be so confident
grace will follow
is to be willing to go
where there are no
sidewalks and still reach
the hotel before it rains.
To choose to stay
there instead of in
a house, to fantasize
about local lobbies
and dimly lit bars
encased in translucent glass
and steel where the coffee is
strong and black, to imagine
the sound of an elevator door
opening at my feet
is the closest I come to memorizing
the music woven
into the fabric of this chaise
we might share.
They’re breaking through.
It feels early. I feel late
to wake to the songs
everyone else hums.
I am overripe
to the ones I replay
because addiction is nothing
if not relentless
repetition. Will the lyric
alter slightly with this listening
to make it all about me?
If I can recover
from the need to be
your you, perhaps you
will relent—give one
up for me.
They say be
in the moment.
I say I want to be
in that moment—that night
three summers ago
on a boat as it changes
its course beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Pause into slow turning, live
guitars propel the motion.
Or that moment after
the boat has docked
on the bank of the Cuyahoga,
the sound of guitars
still rings
in my ears—lips
on mine before I know
what or who
is happening. But not that
moment followed by the next
of seemingly unending sea
sickness on a ferry
as it rocks across
the Aegean. And not that one still
to come that I cannot
fathom. How do I become
willing to let go of the old rail
to recognize when another exalted one
might strike? This question hangs
on tight.
Multiple star, high
end hotel with its opaque
smoke and mirror
windows and dark
corridor leading to a bar
she just wants to see
to steal a setting
for her make-believe
life. She doesn’t wear
her glasses. She won’t
go inside. Her nearsightedness
leaves her
outside conjuring
up sidewalk
impressions instead.
I collected them
from their metal button holes
in a women’s bathroom stall.
I tucked one
behind your ear, the other
behind mine. I did what I could
with them: message
in red, in elongated green,
message in true thorn.
I did
what I could.
Should I have
taken them
with me when I left
your room at dawn?
A perfect poem
of the ridiculous becomes
subtle, becomes two roses
crossed on a table
we left behind
by choice,
we left behind
by choice,
say it twice
for both of us,
for what’s left of them.
I must learn how
to describe each tiny movement
from solid green to a yellow brushed with red breaking
into orange without
these blocks of language. I turn up the volume
when this instrumental plays—sweet
guitar sings vocal lines, the human voice
at rest. Seductively rich
baritone be still
for these moments, while I work
on my lesson, a thing I am to practice
with my soul—
without a bridge.
Counts backwards
till she can’t breathe. She pretends
a message will appear
at zero
on a screen addressed to her
from you. A different kind
of marring,
you’ll be asking for it.
Hard on the lips,
her pressure increases
as your resistance
goes down. Exaltation.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 