NANETTE RAYMAN RIVERA


TMJ Makes Me Animal

I come to the clinic alarmed
to see how sexy the TMJ ward is—
I should feel adequate
yet all this choke and yolk about whitening –
makes me animal, makes me whirr
in wallets of hornets who aren’t home
this vanity is not for me, I'm over-
biting rows of fierce mandibular pillow talk:
how come you can't get over
that bite? as for me stomach-sad
and migraine-mad: can I borrow
your occlusion when you come
   into the room?

You could be the curve along my spine,
You could stall the grind
You are white teeth and bare
   fluid along my jaw
I’m lips together in leopard flesh

    He puts those purple bite-papers in, winded
    and waiting for spots to bow beneath him
    like I would
    while under the burnt-rubber roar
he knows my teeth and how I might
make love in the way
   I grind them, brut-
   ally, and in pain.



thoughtless love letter

The length of the night is crimson-spun fingers squeezing and I
am lost in the limit of it with knives
to rip from my brain, murderous thoughts, pushy as birth,
this night of shivers, this sleet,
the puff of my addicted husband down my face.

Pushy as playgrounds, but they are changing, these thoughts,
across distinct markings, tissue-thin leaves that crackle
when the voyeurs and judgments break from the source,
this being a magi - cal autumn.

They prevail. I hurl the knives.
I carry them through the crack
plagued sidewalk, to our apartment, run words
and my bloody neck, which already begins to heal,
into the white whinnying water.

I wash them, rinse them out of my hair, all
to lie in wait, grieved yet gritty
like South Pacific beauties, hair frothy bubble casing,
How long can the heart stop dead its thought turnstile- teach me

the phantom-life, what sets the sancocho-ed sky's
barometer back to one: how do thoughts turn into
a fairy tale track? A clean incision for the unskied,
the moon-dressed walker who is not snow.

I wish you were here tonight. My neck will buck
all red necked thoughts. I left knives by the dumpster and I
will not think. Send thoughts. Do. Turn again to me.



Outside like the Great Bellatrix

What I remember are monolithic stars fizzing over Japanese gardens for acres, shrubs wrapped around cobblestones like obis, roseate with voltage. Hunters rushing the blushed span of sky. The hair on my nape a warm campanile, my breasts
swimming against weeds, and your letter, fallen between
blades, the wind, your will-let me believe this night's
escape. You love me, have loved me so long.
The way you say love – breaking to notice stars flaring
Like dried daubs of paint on the sky.
Even I can find Forever Yours, and below it, your name.

There is nothing but heat and wind.
I wanted to know badly why I was here, in this life,
in this feeling of utter silence, palpable as drawings
of mothers and homes, and wondered when I could leave,
if I could leave at all. Or if I existed only in prisms
of the homeless. Oh stars, what am I
that his words should pry open in a gloaming garden,
in the marrow of an unfortunate warrior.