December 25, 2018

Nina Lindsay

REPAIR

The rain showers won’t stop returning,
as if someone needs to make a decision.
Haggard doves and delivery vans

prowl around morning’s scene
of general disaster. At the café
we don’t really pay attention,

we are reading the East Bay Living section,
the comics, the reviews, the April travel
ads. Every now and then

one person looks up,
and down. We all think
we are in the same lifeboat. And we don’t

delude ourselves lightly—
we go about it with the same care you take
with newborns, with pastries,

with the Christmas present you unwrapped
once, in the middle of the night, underneath the tree,
knowing too much to sleep,

a longer distance ahead,
love oddly steadier for the disappointment,
and hope only slightly blemished.

from Rattle #25, Summer 2006

__________

Nina Lindsay: “Working as a children’s librarian in Oakland, California, I find poetry mostly on lunch hours, public transportation, or in the bleary early morning hours at my local cafe, on Post-its and the back of receipts.” (web)

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November 23, 2015

Nina Lindsay

IN THE END

These are my last wishes:
to lie beneath the rosemary,
the scrubby kind, used for hedging
municipal buildings, shelter

to rats and trash.
It smells good,
it’s cheap, it blooms,
you hack it back

when it gets too big.
For some reason
they never remove it, when it’s obvious
they should, and replant.

Lying there, who would notice
me listening:
the boys scheming
to hop the fence but not doing it;

the couple not quite yet a couple, at least
they don’t think so.
They talk about their week.
Who else would care, with such

obvious delight
about such crap? They are in love.
So is the dog
with the girl, who calls him

and he comes. And she throws it
and he goes.
The girl, last week, stole
a stuffed animal from the library.

She doesn’t know it was stealing.
It stays with her in sleep and smells,
now, like her most intimate self.
It is comfort and conscience, her heart

displayed so brazenly,
no one would dare think of it.
In twenty years, its memory
will roll up in her gut

like a stone long formed—
and this is how she will learn
to forgive herself,
and to treasure human error.

Now her sneakers shush
across the concrete, warm
August air laps against her ankles.
The dog is still going at it,

his ears flop
in rhythm with her breath.
My last wish
is to be that.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015

__________

Nina Lindsay: “Poetry helps me to appreciate each part of my world in appropriate measure. It gives me the space—physical, mental, emotional—to experience the funny, the gross, the beautiful, the horrifying … so that I know what I’m dealing with when I step out into the day. Poetry helps me be a better person by recognizing myself and others, and I hope that my own poetry can do this for someone, too.” (web)

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