Stuck in Waco

Nanette Rayman-Rivera

When I want to be
in Eretz Israel—
And the intermission,
the maybe-tomorrow that I felt everlasting,
the antipathetic,
the affirmative
action that made lightning rods
out of me,
after months in beige flatlands
the seam between the worlds
cracked and I ceased to be.

I become the intermission,
my intractable-alone affliction
hidden from imaginary eyewitnesses who seem so many
agape aliens—
No one to approach
who seems empathic,

I become unending,
the blood in my aorta in the dungeon of my breasts,
I can’t feel the air around my neck
with its apodictic starless midnights I feel
the aneroid wind in the clay of my chest I am
no longer human, no longer specter
the billows are done,
I am frozen. What long mantle of heat is over
the year of slit seams on the darkening highways
of two worlds?

Nanette Rayman-Rivera is the author of the memoir, to live on the wind, which was winner of the first Glass Woman Prize for non-fiction. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and a chapter of her memoir was published in DZANC Best of the Web 2010. She has been published in numerous literary journals, including Oranges & Sardines, MiPOEsias, Berkeley Fiction Review, Wicked Alice, Carve Magazine, The Worcester Review, Carousel, carte blanche and Pebble Lake Review, among many others.