escape

Torrential rain falls. Pigeons tramp through it,

and waffle out their rapture along with their woe.

They have no course above the bathtub road.

I’ll hightail it out one day—see the FDR Drive in rain,

its slick track still sore at the horizon mouth—

a mucilage skate, ambulance-white, infinite.

Trippingly, it’s called, when what’s below

is tar and what’s beyond, escape.

A path through scrawny trees;

let rain wash off the statues,

fruitless lives come and go like fashions.

See the ranks of housing projects in rain

see my face clean from rain

eyes cathedraling like bur oaks

and know it’s a go! I’m on it.

Rain hasn’t left much use for pretty

flowing sundresses, foiled again, but

faithless I’m ready to dislodge

my lover’s cocoon

of crevices and cells.

The wind acts like snow blower, turns

my badass bandit spring to a soft manor. Now,

when I admit I have nowhere to go, I can walk

swampy scalp of the project, resigned, but slowly, beside

rambunctious mice. And soon, my love and I will splash

together into the barren homeward plash.

Nanette Rayman Rivera, two-time Pushcart nominee is author of poetry collection: Project: Butterflies by Foothhills Publishing and a chapbook, alegrias, by Lopside Press. She is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for memoir and her poem: Shoes, was published in Best of the Net 2007. Publications include The Worcester Review, Oranges & Sardines, MiPOesias, Pebble Lake Review, Carve Magazine, Stirring's Steamiest Six, Pedestal, Wheelhouse, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Barnwood, Snow Monkey, Three Candles, Sein Und Werden, Carousel, decomp, ditch, Prick of the Spindle, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Dragonfire, blossombones, Barnwood, Dirty Napkin, Arsenic Lobster, Magnolia, unmoveable feast, Thirteen Myna Birds, Hobble Creek Review, Green Silk – Best of Issue, Gold Wake Press, Whistling Shade and Featured Poet in Up the Staircase. Upcoming: The Clearfield Review, Contemporary American Poetry.