steel bolted in skylight,
shylight of a pie-crust wing
dangling
hands like a deranged ballerina
scrounging breeding blackfly
for some thing.

a lame nightingale
dragging no cause and effect
across Mojave dunes
brain collosumed
in Natalie Wood eyes too big for my face.
sweet pain of intellect.

blood washing a violin
people whisperer, knowing
time has come today.
Hannah Arendt hoodoo.
numinous as Nietzsche
naming the ballet troupe
ronde de jambe out of fourth position.

Our life
is sawed-off shotgun
across patchouli carbuncle blues
my Velvet Crush lips
my Cat on a Hot Tin Roof slip
slips creamily to the floor.

You
sewing me together
for now. agog in Greek tragedy
my white eyelet dress
turning the corner
like oleander to spray your eyes.

You
return me
as sparks
to that pre-universe accident
and we drop-kick life
off the Verazzano Bridge
as we gather
bird membranes in heaps
the way everyone else
gathers for a hanging.

Seething

Like a blind hibiscus groping for mulch
slit-shut eyes, woodsy, brown and underlined
I imagine myself.

Still-born Jezebel,
I have breasts, skimmed wanton milk to waste
watered-down urine and lunar-powered voice.
Do away with these walls and the sticky phantoms contained.
Cull from bats digging my shoulder some reason
my fallopian hair lies with all those smells
on my absinthe soaked sheets, why
I hear ancient lovers smooch me through the mirror
and Daddy with marionette strings clipped.

Once I dashed
in and out of rooms like this,
the pocket of my black lace skirt
stuffed with C-notes mashed into balls.

I risk a lot with my redwood hair
my older china doll face.
This is an old woman’s room, cupping
a treasure chest of drugged sleep and loss.
My own loss an animal shape, seething entity
alive
and clamoring to escape.

I must move small
or gash my thigh on hanging antennae
each year a dump
attracting seagulls.
I am a seagull.*
No.
I am an actress.

All Poetry by Nanette Rayman