nanette rayman

How She Died

On the path of cigarette butts layering 13th Street
banners of rain smack the room's window

where someone brewed vanilla cappuccino
and left it half drunk on the desk.

The black and white TV tuned to One Life to Live
just now the antennae fractured.

Down the hall wafted rasps of violin
endless solo echoing on a scratched record,

where stars like drops of blood depart jaggedly
among loud birds filling new cherry trees.

Where the moon slides behind the zigzag sky,
thin as the foam of a receding wave,

the sidewalk swallows a woman,
her fingertips striated in tar buckling
so fast not a single sigh can escape.