Lantana
Poem
by Nanette Rayman Rivera • Art by Sunny Williams
Bad stars are cold topography, I live there.
The earth turns the color of trailing lantana.
Remember the red diary, mother, the sooted addiction to sex?
Bad, blathering thing, your daughter deep in her fret of blossom.
I hid between flowers on the yellow wallpaper, waiting and staring,
Scissors on hair unlocked as you refused to give in.
We had potato latkes, noodle pudding so rich its sugar
Tinged the tablecloth I made in Art with ruby bloodlines.
Your voice hit the porch like vees of gulls.
I sat there and rocked, inhaling a stolen Winston.
Nicotine bloated the floorboards, stained the mint green paint
I saw my dead father’s hands holding a smoke.
Look, daughter, he cried. I left what unsettles
me
to come here, lowdown where your uncured stems root,
I saw the future, an Indian-named lake I could drown in.
This omen is so bad, I want it stark
The way you turned dead, I was not let down easy.
Your body bathed and visited, I could not bear to know!
Remember how I danced on the porch to Baby,
Baby, can’t you Hear my Heart Beat?
You and I, Dad, away and apt, letting go, taking the sky like a tonic,
Rain jabbing holes in the forsythia, and boys in Levis
Passed by on the street, their eyes on me converted
To a species of piranha, how after the shear imitation of weather,
You loved off my doll’ s hair, forced her hold to let go
You recited a poem – Though nothing
can bring back the hour
I know the rest says don’t grieve, but let me go slowly
Perhaps we could dig dirt in the garden, pick the poison
Lantana with both our hands, fetching it to mother.
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