Selected Poetry

Unknown Man

Are you going to haunt the cops who frayed your body with bullets
Unknown Man
Are you returning one last time to this World
To scream your rage
To make them understand
Your homeland was a distant wish
Your nightly pillow a swollen slab of rain-soaked wood
Your pennies could never be used
In the service of tanning booths or trendy hair cuts
Unknown Man

Are you wandering
On the streets of Stockes
Unknown Man

Lost
Bewildered
Seeking answers to our cruelty

Why are the neighbors arguing over tanning booths and hair salons

Will you appear in their dreams
Or walk the rooms of their loved ones
Will you return to our World one last time
Unknown Man
To convince us
You were someone worthy

Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Mercado




The Dead
Where I lay the dream of
following myself in your soul
—Julia De Burgos

I face the universe
When I speak to the dead
I lay as they do
In their coffins
My body upright
Revealed to the wide expanse
Of the firmament

There I speak with mother
In some brightly-lit hallway

She says she is going
To sleep with father
His voice resonating from inside
A black room she enters

I often speak to the dead
They share their days with me
Provide advice
They have no wings
No halos
No emitting light from within
They’re people just like you and like me

Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Mercado




Mom’s Phone Call
 
My mother called today
Only to express her worry
Only to share her nightmare
Only to warn me
Of some impending doom
Only to say she begs nightly
To her Lord in the heavens
For my protection
Only to confirm her love

Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Mercado

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Catcalls to My Brain

No 1980’s tight young ass to pounce on anymore
No smooth skin to assault anymore
No frightened little girl to follow
Down cold shitty Lower East Side streets anymore

Now-a-days the boys catcall my intellect
Corner me in conference rooms
Universities
In restaurants

¡¿Oye mami cuántos libros has leído?!

¡No sabes na bruta!

Where did you graduate from mami?!

Your university degree means nada nena!

They attempt to inflict
Injuries with blank pages
To drown me out
Under piles of exclusions
To erase my existence
To whittle me down
To a stub

N o t h i n g

Silence.

These days my catcallers
Are the intelligentsia
Postmodern jeering elitists
Hyperbolic hipsters swooping in to take charge
Our modern-day land grabbers
The white settlers of the information age
Revolutionary revisionists

My cat-calling boys come with females in tow these days
Sold out dames of trendiness
Fast talking fools
Puking memorized conceptual hullabaloos
Living delusions

They are lost souls

Existing in their own holograms of fame
Convinced masses in the world
Know their name
Believe their immortality

Don’t my cat callers understand
They have yet to be born?

Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Mercado



Reasons for Living with You

I lived with you
To discover
What destruction
Looked like

When you discarded me
I laughed in
Pouring hail
Crossed streets
In the middle
Of nights

Weary of time
In empty buildings
I watched
From outside
The flicker
Of candlelight
Through strange windows

Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Mercado

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Selected Poetry Videos