nine days homeless
poetry by nanette rayman
he's put his hand in mine, in a triolet,
in tornada and moans, I want to grab
my hand back, and I don't, he's a street
guy, a vaquero, he's younger, a muchacho malo
he's got a flamboyán face and he's stealing
indiscriminately from my future and his
past. we're walking by the river, come,
baby, come, he says, and I don't
know if he's genuine or a parasitic
terata, I just know he could render me
like the insides of a clam or the shape
of fire before it burns.
I've only been homeless nine days
and he could sexain me with fingers,
it could hurt my skin like a biopsy.
he walks me to the river, summer's
stiletto legs loping through amber
sand. I don't have a grain of sense, just
these grains of pomegranate, these bullets
he bought me, then ice cream. he takes me
down around the sunflowers with long green necks.
they swerve through me like he will—wait
a long while before you touch my face, wait
before you boil me with those eyes. Calyx
opens out, keen and voraciously calm,
what takes me's no more
than surrender that knows
this is one way to be fed.
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