now, phantasmagorical

Nightfall slunk in through the courtyard the behemoth blue forever
cowered so still to keep me cha-cha dancing alone in lemon-yellow sundressed
sorceresses that had devoured me from behind a rhododendron dying alone
where men loitered exploring within their drugs star-smelling myths of
themselves never blockaded by anyone, not like me who is besieged in the
dark forever—their noise as decrees spiraling from their spindly dirty legs like
antediluvian claxons. Nightfall is affixed in this courtyard with a perilous lugubrious air.

Arriving from the street the brutal womb of the lost and the dangerous
abandoning monsters of madness, mostly sadness guns knives condoms palms of drugs.
Nightfall gods winding through the street into the courtyard meting out loneliness
binges of memory above all tragedies of the real type of purity—good hearts.
Faces beneath the crack and meth, the pipes and aluminum foil, the geeking mouths.
Like you, missing husband, pure of heart rolling around and missing in the dregs, dusk
falling to disquiet. Nightfall slinks away out of the courtyard the behemoth blue forever.

The vaporization of your-mouth-sugar-kissing the looting of me and my now
unkissed mouth scavenging for Psalm 27 and any redemptive light in the black
hole. Were you alone when you went missing, mandarin of a man hemlocking
the street? Your face will resonate all my years—a forsythia of dust, cha-cha
dancing caballero—your missing lips whisper missing consonants of freedom, this
night, will you come?  No one searches for you anymore. Did they at all? I am left
with the menacing men. The mandarin sun, the sun, the sun stars in the silence.
I listen to your voice that won’t come. Come, for better to have your tough-tenderness
and delight in your mouth, dreaming tomorrow you will come, and tomorrow will
be a plethora of lips, eyes, legs, arms, and bellies. I am ready, perfumed and lipsticked,
laced-up flesh, opening in the sorcery of your absence.

out of breath

All the pale blue light, all the angora light draped in noctilucent clouds,
while you went missing I held my breath but my breath resisted and
you on the phone couldn’t speak you were gasping, sound of rustling,
a fight. The phone cannot convey the stench of burning rubber or the cutting
in of Fentanyl you met up with the drossiest dealer you would say vagabundo
I say rashá After a great love, a stoic feeling comes when the man can’t stop
his diabolic crack-smoking. Night shining clouds a treat after the fatal
colors of belladonna demons in purple tinged green. Now a burst so
beautiful of ice dust. Pinwheel eyes return hazel buck eyes that loved
me true and true this evening ice and dust and pale blue angora battue

all over the earth try to fill the gash in me no one ever found you I remember
you loved me to the sky and back without your eyes I am blind what good
penance if you’re gone, frail necklace of addiction in exchange for life.
When the scimitar of sky boots my neck and you’ve gone missing, when
cops are uncaring blue and I feel, if only you’d cracked open your demons,
I sway beneath blue clouds that may as well be dark persona, cops care
nothing for those without comrades to beg on the news; they care nothing
for a carved widow, she is one only—for prayers unheard in the pale blue
angora and the hazel of your eyes that loved me nothing for the gods who
unblessed me by unblessing you they decided who goes, who lasts beneath
night lights, solitary woman, inked in your blood, blown away and blind.

Nanette Rayman-Rivera, author of poetry books, Shana Linda Pretty Pretty, Project: Butterflies, is a two-time Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net 2007, DZANC Best of the Web 2010, winner Glass Woman Prize for prose. Publications: The Worcester Review, Sugar House Review (mentioned newpages.com), Stirring’s Steamiest Six, gargoyle, sundog, Berkeley Fiction Review, Editor’s Pick prose at Green Silk Journal, Pedestal, ditch, Wilderness House, and decomp, among others. She lives with her puppy, Layla.