More than the foot I broke
outside Van Cortlandt Park.
And the friends
and family and
strangers who visited
me up there. To be at the end
of the line
at night and first
on the train the next
morning, to be safely wedged
northwest, to be rich
in two hours’ worth of rhythmic
thought each day is
to be more than the sum
of 160 steps up.
Digital monsters
with moustaches, power
outlets in the café
floor, the names
we never got
right—that door
ought to be
locked. Or, then, not
at all. Why did this
way get invented
if no one is
allowed to go
this way? That
would be called
the last
exits to exist.
No recipes for Pinterest. No nails
for the resurrection
of Washington
Avenue. It’s really a boulevard
without the reach
of Broadway. I remember
the way I lived
in the Bronx. That elevated #1
line dropped shadows,
then hints, of the plains
I might choose to cross
before decades erased
my interest
in pins and collage.
One hundred Bronx trees can speak
along the Grand Concourse. She wants to believe
they’ll speak
without the drink, will be interactive, won’t tumble
into monologues
with the arrogance to think
they are so different. She’s going to continue
to listen for them through light
rain and substantial winds. The stories they will tell.
Slip on ice but don’t fall
down. Seventeen more
days. We want a preview.
If I were a train,
I’d be local
and mostly underground
till I’m not. Sub or el—either way
I’d move people more
than I could ever move you
or me into tomorrow’s
shades of the unstratified.
Somewhere way uptown
“Bird Lives.” Barefoot
and in love, two dart
through wet cement.
Pen pals will be
spawned. Stenciled
broken promises, the Bronx
could have come crumbling
down. But it’s held on
for the ride. When the last
of the writing on the wall
rolled along those tracks,
I arrived ready
to be winded
by those step streets.
I didn’t know it
would be the shape
shifting that would catch me
in the throat.
No photos ever of me
in Brooklyn. Some in Queens—
an Astoria fourplex with unfinished
hardwood floors. Manhattan all over beginning
inside the helm of the Flat Iron.
The Bronx north of 232nd Street indoors
and out. Even one on Staten Island before
dashing across the Verrazano Narrows
Bridge. Where did they go? I know
they were taken
by the tiny broken locks
in my soul.
But I can’t end
on that—I’ll be the one
stealing, not having earned
the right to mention it—
the soul that is.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 