Issue > Poetry
Nina Lindsay

Nina Lindsay

Nina Lindsay is the author of two collections of poetry, Today's Special Dish and Because (forthcoming April 2016), both from Sixteen Rivers Press. Her poems have previously appeared in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Colorado Review, Rattle, Mudlark, Fence and other journals. Nina is a librarian in Oakland, California, where she grew up and lives today.

Friday Evening on the Stoop, November

Late light shines through the ginkgo's dulling ruff—
Soon to be golden, but now just less green.

Message from a far-off friend: Dear Dahlin',
Hope all is well despite the world's attempts

to destroy everyone and everything.

I stretch and the dove startles up—

settles on a maple branch in the tepid air, stirring it.
When did the hours become viscous? An acquaintance

passes with her dogs and doesn't see me; or does,
but pretends not to. There is a kindness in the way

we and the world's stuff move around each other—
like we are both the dollhouse figures and the dollhouse owners—

moving toward a perfect arrangement,
but somehow always out-sized or deficient.  

There is a kindness,
I am sure. The squirrel plants his walnuts

in my freshly planted bed. The neighbors' private security guards
flash their imitation cop car lights over all of us;

the creek sounds its death-rattle in banishment below.
Is the world just a thin excuse for itself?

So much sweet, but more fury?
The dove comes back, to thrash in the birdseed.

Now the light is gone,
and the little, and the barely, and the dumb  

drift in and huddle against the dark's generous flank.

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