Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

Two Poems by Marcy Rae Henry

the last poem in Spanglish

i feel somebody creeping up behind me
in English. looking for land.  maybe just earrings.
maybe all the property from Park Place
to St. James.  maybe just me.
i wanted to say no in their language
wanted to say: poesía.
pero poetry is just playin.
i am well aware of my privilege on paper.
that is where i work it.
so many women before me.
some sisterhoods i don’t want to belong to.
they want to tear me open para ver lo que
está adentro. separate wheat from chaff.
chicana from white. more than part oppressor
part oppressed, i am aquí and i am allá. 
none of this is happening in my soul.
so the police will never know.
i’ve the scent of the dogs on me. been to a place
where la verdad es una enfermedad.
used a noun for a verb and a verb for a fork.
i’ve canceled all my subscriptions
prescriptions my condiciones and chingadera.
i’m ready for them to pull on my tongue
until it resembles a tombola.
so it stops rrrrrolling the r’s and elooongating
the vowels. so i will stop hiding pills underneath.
the princess and the pill. peel off my chemical.
tell me how to pronounce it and everything
sounds like sixty percent off. i have been
Eva, La Llorona, La Malinche, una chica
pinche loca pichinche escuincle picosa picara
cara barata ingrata graciosa grandiosa acuosa
but no one wants a poem wet with tears.
some people want a three-legged dog.
three-dollar words. pennies to put
over our dog’s eyes when they die and traverse
el Río Grande on their own. into the sticks.
over the river and through the woods to Mictlan-
tecuhtli’s house we go. i thought i was
aquí to be both. to bounce. pero ya no hay
dos bandos. there is only one coin. 
one myth. 
we forget when we are born
because we’d want to unbecome.
which is why they say we are unbecoming.
they say you can still paint but only in one color.
when i have decided i will come to them in a dream
and their dreams will always be
in the color of my choosing.
every day día de muertos.
sometimes you have to rise christ-like like dawn
like bread. one day i’ll be the vernacular
in their backseat. y que me ven en el espejo.
maybe the vernacular will be illegal and out on bail.
maybe i’ll just sigh loudly.
chew the fat. or suction it out.
ignore the symptoms.
the need to turn a star
into something that rhymes
with the sun. or the sun into my soul.

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day in the life as sonnet

do you know color is just a trick of light?
why do we have to return to México?
why can’t México return to us?
why don’t we talk anymore?
why did you change the locks?
where is my daddy?
what are you doing here?
     what  are  you   do-ing    here?
          you know    youdon’tbe long?
                       where’s yur papers?
                 where the fuck you comin from?
no no no where thefuck  you fromfrom?
          i said: where are fuckin your hands?

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Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands who’s had motorcycle crashes in Mexican-America, Turkey and Nepal. She is the author of death is a mariachi, winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize and CHIRBY (Chicago Review of Books) finalist,  (Bauhan Press), when to go to the Taj Mahal (Bottlecap Press), the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press), dream life of night owls, winner of the Open Country Chapbook Contest, (Open Country Press), and We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press).  Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, four Pushcart nominations, first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest and Kaveh Akbar recently chose her fiction collection as a finalist for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. MRae is professor of English, literature and creative writing at Wright College Chicago, a Hispanic Serving Institution, where she serves as Coordinator of the Latin American Latino/x Studies Program and received Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society’s 2023-2024 Outstanding Educator Award.  She is a senior editor for RHINO and a digital minimalist with no social media accounts. 

Photo credits: Rio Grande River by Jonathan Saleh on Unsplash, and Handcuffs by picturexv via a Creative Commons license.

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