Author Archives: Claudine Nash

Let’s hold these thoughts
far from our hearts, the timeworn
ones that make us sink
in doubt or draw us down
when we pull forward. Let’s
roll them between our
fingers and feel their thin
cloth catch on our winter
skin. We’ll crumple them,
lift them up to the window panes,
watch the cold morning pour
through the rips in their
flimsy fabric.

I want to lose them at the
beach. We can slip them into
the sea as the tide sets out,
drop them into a deep hole
and watch the sand claim
the shifting space where they
sit. I’m done with these
gnawing whispers. Let’s be
old-school gangsters and
make some silence. I’ll get
the concrete forms, you
toss them from the pier when
the fog rushes the night.

 

Previously appeared in The Camel Saloon

The answer
was scratched on a
crumpled leaf caught
in a mid-march draft,

read once by a woman who
barely whispered its terms,
twice
by a man with a

mouth full of
marbles. It was
etched on the driftwood

that slipped out to sea;
crammed in a rusted tin
box then mislaid

below floorboards.
It was stashed in a closet,
concealed with
sheetrock

and spackle,
splashed on the
walls and repainted

an oil-based white.
You can search
the negative space

around and between
for weeks without end
and still
never see it.

The rising moon
won’t toss you
a clue,

and for better or worse,
the headstones aren’t
talking.

 

Previously appeared in Eye On Life Magazine

You wasted nothing.
You breathed energy
into the ozone,
recycling atoms of
spent oxygen
into pockets of
positively charged air.
Micro moments
were deemed
thrilling things,
snow and sand
flecks of thin but
wondrous matter.
You savored
day’s existence,
wiping clean
near empty slates,
prizing every
piece of light that
wrapped around
each eyelash.
You didn’t spend
an instant nursing
anything but
exuberance,
spilling anything
into the atmosphere
that wasn’t cut
from love.

 

Previously appeared in The MOON magazine