Interview with a Clothesline and Other Poems – Nina Lindsay

Cover art: Mural art in Imola’s train underpass, photo by Pina Piccolo.

Interview with a Napkin

I don’t want to think about the past,
forgive me. Tell me this:

can you think of a word
for curiosity that is rooted in love?

Because I know where other kinds of curiosity
can lead some people, and I’d rather not.

You can feel it in the tension of the hands,
the way they make the air go still,

like before a storm.
I’m talking

about curiosity as practiced by a child,
the one that smears their plum across the linen

because it beautiful.
Hands that allow

things to move in them.
I have always wanted to be able

to put a hand in water,
to touch the disconsolate child

in consolation.

Interview with an Adagio

The truth only seems unspeakable.
Let’s watch it quietly

like an omelet
dropped on the floor.

I find compassion helpful here.
Could things get better?

Could things get…okay?
You focus on the pain, then disarm it.

When I was younger, they say I talked too much,
too fast, my intervals jangled.

My task was the garden and soon
the symphonic dandelions, clattering nasturtiums,

the wisteria overtook the downspouts barking at the sun—
so, that was that.

Now, I’m lucky to finish a thought by sunrise.
Sunrise.

Why does the skin of time turn itself translucent
just as you start to turn your head away?

I used to think it meant there were things we shouldn’t see.
But now I think it’s so we know it’s sparing us from seeing them.

Interview with a Clothesline

Since time only goes in one direction
let’s go in that direction.

I was here,
I was very young,

the sky bombastic, the crows unruly.
Hourly, there were startling discoveries

that—as the hours wore on—I discovered
had already been discovered.

Now I am here,
I am not very young,

clothing damp from dew dries by afternoon
and is forgotten again to dew.

A week, unfolded
as if you could enter it at any point—

but you can only take in one piece after the other.
There is a moment in Bach’s Goldberg Variations

where it is impossible to go on.
And yet you come to that moment again.

Interview with a Plate

I mostly fear those who come to me in anger.
I’ve been thrown against the wall more than once;

I don’t crack
but it hurts.

Where does that anger go, if there’s no explosion?
I don’t know, but eventually

it leaves the room
and this frightens me most of all.

Times like these, I take solace in roundness,
in having a single edge that’s always equidistant from my center.

Think of me when you straighten your back
and the pain flees like a beetle exposed to light.

The fungible space in the center.
Do not let the anger

rush into that void.
You keep it open by singing.

Ode to Orange

At the center of the flower,
in the dirt, in the ovule,

in the soft and ever-present
darkness warmed by sun,

dread finds you even here
but here it runs mute and unobstructed

along with joy and all
the things you know exist

but can’t find anymore.
They fill you,

with no demand but to fill you,
until the light leaks out between your ribs.

Courage

Standing on the pool deck in the cold morning with strangers in goggles

Riding on the bus, lurching forward, the collective desire to arrive on time

Waiting for the bus

Helping the person who asks for help

Planting the lemon tree in the parking strip

Cooking the stew and freezing half

Paying the insurance

Holding hands in public

Watching children running up the stairs—they are certain their breath will carry them to the top
and its does—and loving these children who are not your children

Wrestling with budget cuts, holding simultaneous but shifting futures in your mind—tomorrow,
next year, and forever

Lifting the curtain to the light and the rain, then opening the door to the cold because it’s
beautiful

Stepping to the threshold to meet the thing you don’t know what to call—it is like the roots left
behind underground when someone tried to pull it out but only got the stalk—it is something you
have—soon it may be all that you have

Odds

Towhee hopped in, pecked around our rug
(for what?) took a shit, then flew out.
I stooped to clean up after it and thought
about how much I love towhees: plain and dun<<
and scratching. Their shrill chirps, small messes,
and capacity for moving on. No matter
me, chopping onions. They take things in
then take their chances. Once we found one dead
in a trap we’d set for rats out in the garden.
All that day its mate mutely hopped
and hopped through their usual paces. Then was gone.
So unlike the narcissists who are not stupid
yet are ugly in spirit. Who belittle others and make
great ruckuses, filthily. Pit them against the towhees.

Nina Lindsay is the author of two collections of poetry, Because and Today’s Special Dish. Her work has appeared in many journals including Barrow Street, Cloudbank, the Colorado Review, the Kenyon Review and Prairie Schooner. Lindsay lives and works in Oakland CA.

Interview with a Clothesline and Other Poems – Nina Lindsay

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