Let Your Dress Straps Drop by Nanette Rayman
Because I want justice and won’t get it, I write this to make blood
boil in your veins and for you to say Fuck,
you’re cast against type in your own life.
Even before this most unfair thing, even before stamens stalked
the pistils and the man’s pollen grains luxated my body--
There was that other life with its history swilling a girlhood, a woman
hood of stigma where the scrim refuses to open
the universe to what I might have been.
When I die,
I won’t be shocked to see my eyes still looking
like ornamental beasts out of the portal
I’d searched for before this awkward abiogenesis.
Because of this most unfair thing, the Justice just out
of the scrim choreographs inflorescence to hurt me.
It’s the man who may as well be a machete. It’s the flower
heads all in a row pluck pluck, looking good but whipped
into subservience for lack of--
You stay for a home; what is the difference
between that and a shelter. I can’t tell.
Make no bones
about it. Ayin ha ra the eye is evil but long
and I long to find out who made me the world’s bitch,
a word just come into fashion straight from the world’s ghetto.
Here is my question. I have no need for any other.
My husband was exhuming my security sitting king-like
in a wobbly garage sale chair, when he pointed
the phone at me, a psychotic crack head kind of urgency
in his eyes, no different than breaking my skull with a spade.
Transfer money into my account. Now. Do it. You’re not
going nowhere, lips barely moving, as I try to make
my way to the door, skin crawling and a hack
through my heart. Out of nowhere his filthy hands
around my neck, but I can’t
recall that mother and her fingers pinching without feeling
the portal. That’s what the joke is, that Justice
at the scrim. He does not mete
out portions as we want them, but they say, as
we must have them. Speak to me of what I deserve.
I dare you. Speak to me of my place in the world
to come.
How to escape with a few words typed
on Facebook? Call the Tulsa cops—SOS. Desperation
must be taken to the end of a right address. Here
is the smell of entrapment, stinking of dirt and peduncles.
& after the sunny morning, captured
as the creature turns his head to smoke
a Newport by the window in what had been
the sun’s sweetest caress, I become sun--
both here and formless, both not here and rapaciously formed.
Here are the cops the moment you let your heart stop, let your dress straps drop.
Arrogant husband in the bedroom knowing the outcome, he was tipped
off by a call from the reader on Facebook. Your guts become something
on the outside something to shame you, your body a brick you’d sooner throw
through a window until the sick umbilical cord breaks.
& to think, just last night I might have been almost resigned
to telling you a fake story about how a woman in the flat
land where ducks skirt the sunset honking for a mate, was happy
to not be a star, happy to just waste time in her body.
But I’m not because the doughboy little cop hates
it when a woman claims to be held
hostage and then opens the door. Bad cop, bad cop, Sponge
Bob Square Chest spews his memorized script, oh! Theatre,
was bad casting and demonstrational acting always so putrid
as it is now, taking the innocence and star-eyes out of all women?
It’s all bunny-hop promenade spin of the mind in the breeze-
way now. Every truth taking on another lie from Sponge Square.
Women are usually the aggressors, yeah, 50% of the time, don’t
you know, so shut it, sweetie, or I’ll arrest you. Every thing
taking on the twilight of a zone that could be the portal
to what is my eternity, which is to say, Baby,
you’re gonna pay the man the money, yo mama ain’t
coming, she never left the porchlight on. They tell me
I’m crazy and I should have been long-gone, but the years
go on, and each all day long they tell you whatever
happened, happened because that makes you, you.
The most unfair thing locks
horns with Justice and logic and daisies keep
time as our dreams and our imprisonment, in their strange sleeps
are choreographed like a broken film reel while some stipple of salt
keeps the wounds open. And baby, off you go.
Nanette Rayman is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for writing. She has two poetry books published: Shana Linda, Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies from Foothills Publishing. Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, she has published in The Worcester Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, gargoyle, Pedestal, magnolia, Oranges & Sardines, Up the Staircase Quarterly featured writer, Red Ochre Literature, Stirring’s Steamiest Six, carte blanche, Wilderness House Literary Review, deComp, grasslilmb, Arsenic Lobster, Prick of the Spindle, Carousel and Sugar House Review where her poem, "One Potato, Two," was mentioned in Newpages.com. A story was included in DZANC Books Best of the Web 2010 and a poem, “Shoe” was included in Best of the Net Anthology 2007. She attended Circle in the Square Theatre School and the New School. She has performed in many off off Broadway shows.
Because I want justice and won’t get it, I write this to make blood
boil in your veins and for you to say Fuck,
you’re cast against type in your own life.
Even before this most unfair thing, even before stamens stalked
the pistils and the man’s pollen grains luxated my body--
There was that other life with its history swilling a girlhood, a woman
hood of stigma where the scrim refuses to open
the universe to what I might have been.
When I die,
I won’t be shocked to see my eyes still looking
like ornamental beasts out of the portal
I’d searched for before this awkward abiogenesis.
Because of this most unfair thing, the Justice just out
of the scrim choreographs inflorescence to hurt me.
It’s the man who may as well be a machete. It’s the flower
heads all in a row pluck pluck, looking good but whipped
into subservience for lack of--
You stay for a home; what is the difference
between that and a shelter. I can’t tell.
Make no bones
about it. Ayin ha ra the eye is evil but long
and I long to find out who made me the world’s bitch,
a word just come into fashion straight from the world’s ghetto.
Here is my question. I have no need for any other.
My husband was exhuming my security sitting king-like
in a wobbly garage sale chair, when he pointed
the phone at me, a psychotic crack head kind of urgency
in his eyes, no different than breaking my skull with a spade.
Transfer money into my account. Now. Do it. You’re not
going nowhere, lips barely moving, as I try to make
my way to the door, skin crawling and a hack
through my heart. Out of nowhere his filthy hands
around my neck, but I can’t
recall that mother and her fingers pinching without feeling
the portal. That’s what the joke is, that Justice
at the scrim. He does not mete
out portions as we want them, but they say, as
we must have them. Speak to me of what I deserve.
I dare you. Speak to me of my place in the world
to come.
How to escape with a few words typed
on Facebook? Call the Tulsa cops—SOS. Desperation
must be taken to the end of a right address. Here
is the smell of entrapment, stinking of dirt and peduncles.
& after the sunny morning, captured
as the creature turns his head to smoke
a Newport by the window in what had been
the sun’s sweetest caress, I become sun--
both here and formless, both not here and rapaciously formed.
Here are the cops the moment you let your heart stop, let your dress straps drop.
Arrogant husband in the bedroom knowing the outcome, he was tipped
off by a call from the reader on Facebook. Your guts become something
on the outside something to shame you, your body a brick you’d sooner throw
through a window until the sick umbilical cord breaks.
& to think, just last night I might have been almost resigned
to telling you a fake story about how a woman in the flat
land where ducks skirt the sunset honking for a mate, was happy
to not be a star, happy to just waste time in her body.
But I’m not because the doughboy little cop hates
it when a woman claims to be held
hostage and then opens the door. Bad cop, bad cop, Sponge
Bob Square Chest spews his memorized script, oh! Theatre,
was bad casting and demonstrational acting always so putrid
as it is now, taking the innocence and star-eyes out of all women?
It’s all bunny-hop promenade spin of the mind in the breeze-
way now. Every truth taking on another lie from Sponge Square.
Women are usually the aggressors, yeah, 50% of the time, don’t
you know, so shut it, sweetie, or I’ll arrest you. Every thing
taking on the twilight of a zone that could be the portal
to what is my eternity, which is to say, Baby,
you’re gonna pay the man the money, yo mama ain’t
coming, she never left the porchlight on. They tell me
I’m crazy and I should have been long-gone, but the years
go on, and each all day long they tell you whatever
happened, happened because that makes you, you.
The most unfair thing locks
horns with Justice and logic and daisies keep
time as our dreams and our imprisonment, in their strange sleeps
are choreographed like a broken film reel while some stipple of salt
keeps the wounds open. And baby, off you go.
Nanette Rayman is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for writing. She has two poetry books published: Shana Linda, Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies from Foothills Publishing. Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, she has published in The Worcester Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, gargoyle, Pedestal, magnolia, Oranges & Sardines, Up the Staircase Quarterly featured writer, Red Ochre Literature, Stirring’s Steamiest Six, carte blanche, Wilderness House Literary Review, deComp, grasslilmb, Arsenic Lobster, Prick of the Spindle, Carousel and Sugar House Review where her poem, "One Potato, Two," was mentioned in Newpages.com. A story was included in DZANC Books Best of the Web 2010 and a poem, “Shoe” was included in Best of the Net Anthology 2007. She attended Circle in the Square Theatre School and the New School. She has performed in many off off Broadway shows.