Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Rivera: Gypsy a life in 3 pieces

Gypsy: A Life in Three Pieces
By Nanette Rayman Rivera

I. A Rape

I am still bound
to the girl running in sea lavender
as if she’s an arm or a breast
that fell off me, that I need
to re-affix with a scalpel.
And I could say lilac,
because I want you to smell heady scent
the pretty cherry within
a room, not a ceiling
a sound place, thinking canopy
identified by my almond of amygdala.
And I want to say
lupine and ghost orchids
when he takes her
I want to, but it’s a car
hard to unlock from inside,
the bougainvillea, hyacinth
plucked and saline, un-
head-y cymbals of sex begin
so I stay at the beach, wild
flowers turning more and more ugly,
her dress now just trimmings
and he is the horse-breath galloping her
across a Keep Out-signed field,
a sound like trains over her head,
and a bonfire of bracken,
sting of anemone
still defensive.
Oh, Adonai, enough to be eternal,
is this what it feels like to be raped
and unchosen, to be captured
under the branch of something epic
who knows my way blindly—
Give him his own ocean
of lettered olive snails to bury him,
so I can come back
with persimmons for breasts
and a big salty womb.

II. A Father, A Mother

The detectives buried me in a car
chase, screeching by old houses the color
of undelivered milk and burnished mint. I’m forever
car-sick, and now to be in the box like a link
in a chain-gang makes me thunderous,
makes me ascend in my sweet time,
this no-time.
The weather is all wrong. The sun-beats too hard to bear.
Flowers would help, if they promise not to be greedy.
Modern Rembrandt Tulips, maybe,
the ones without the virus, the ones they call Broken.
The detectives say to call my father.
I could say, Father. I could say, can I please come home
to your split-level house, green over velvet hill
to rest beneath a willow?
I could say, Mother. Do you think you could love me now?
If you are not my father, just say so, don’t say, fault
If you are not my mother, just say so, don’t say, tramp

Do you know that I will find it hard
to lick salt from the necks of future lovers
wake each morning to a man smell
sex in my belly, my dresses, a thing warm
and salty riding my bottom lip.

III. Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour
From "Splendor in the Grass" by William Wordsworth

I try but I can’t imagine my body
as flower right now: not sunset, not fire, sweeping
flesh as jagged lines and arcs.

Some debauchee, some mother, a father
have arranged the way my life will go on.
They removed my sheer raw nerve, disposed
of my scholarship, told me to cover my beauty,
no more foxes slaughtering their mole.
Nothing can bring back the hour.

Living in this hushed afterlife
of rooming house and food stamps, I hear
them blame me, foil me. I stay one step
ahead of the void and the tulips detonate
all over my room: this must be my real deflowering.

Maybe I am in love at last and tangoing
to a violin’s abandon, sideways and forward, leggy
red-dress sprawl, letting my skin fly, releasing
what occupies this host’s body. I’m bound
for unconditional love, unclamped mouth,
this requires and reddens grief
through my flowered tripwire hemline.

Nanette Rayman Rivera, two-time Pushcart Nominee, is the author of the poetry collection, Project: Butterflies, published by Foothills Publishing, and the chapbook, alegrias, published by Lopside Press. She is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for non-fiction. Her poem Shoes, 1943 will appear in the Best of the Net Anthology – February 2008. Publications include Dragonfire, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and many others. She was Guest Editor for Moondance in December 2007. She studied at The New School, Circle in the Square, Gene Frankel Studios and the New England Shakespeare Festival. She played a waitress four times on All My Children, has performed in numerous black box theatres in New York City and Boston and is listed on imbd, Turner Classic Movies and Yahoo Movies for her roles in Stephan’s Silver Bell and Guns on the Clackamas.