Nanette Rayman Rivera

instinct

I lie on my side facing Jerusalem.  A bed full
of antidote.  My newly formed feet.  A shimmy of sheet

rocked walls.  A husband with a bear
hug each hour, husband as pocket

protector.  For all my life I spoke
to doors and windows.  Today, my words leaked over

like air let out of a tire.  I recalled that I was the one
who traipsed Newbury and Beacon Streets, hungry

and parched, that my mother fashioned her fingernails
and a diaspora for me that my brothers kept up.

That they circled her like P Diddy’s bodyguards in night
clubs in case shots were fired.  In case I woke up

to the power of me.  And I did.  I let go.  I called her
out, that mother, that Medea, and suddenly Cinderella

made sense.  I left a message for her and let out my language
again:  Mother, you are the worst of all mothers.  Suddenly

Jim Morrison rolled off my tongue.  This is the end, my only
mother, the end.  And the mosquito bites on my thighs stopped

itching.  When my brother, that lap dog, called to bomb
bast me, I became light, I became animal.  I embodied a power.

I found myself able to say, I am free of you, I am diamond. 
My mother is now Israel.

Chain of Fools

The man swaggers waist up naked on stage—

flesh I can see through to the bluest

blue-racer tattoos.  Apache and his black hair foaming

forming whips. Chain chain chain

Submitting girl submitting like sugar

forgotten in a saucy rain-drenched room.

A backbite of sex hisses through my belly.

The stench outrages me, the watery mutton of it

won’t allow the life of a woman to end.

I forgot where my sex was,

or why arch-back is the contour among

all contours in this world.  Seems like a past-

the-worst grinding down of my age.  Energized, careless—

a weightless harness holds my newly charged apples.

I’m just a link in you chain

I need this cult of spike, of alive broad through the hip or heart

and prominent thighs.  Trance me heavy

metalloid  in the way your letter T pushes through

me when you beg: I’m married To you:

I ain’t nothing but your fool

I do not scrub the floors of my husband‘s  O sweet flowery sighs

or imagine how his hair whipped once-when—

I could curtsy to you naked and whip-to

the way your lips cockle

& permanently stain me

And you and me could fly to the land

of little, my Caesar and

back to a room on the moon where our hair

takes off.

Nanette Rayman Rivera, two-time Pushcart nominee, is the author of Project: Butterflies by Foothills Publishing and alegrias by Lopside Press. Other publications include Oranges and Sardines, MiPOesias, Carousel, Dragonfire, Arsenic Lobster, Pebble Lake Review, Pedestal, O Sweet Flowery Roses, Worcester Review and Carve Magazine.