Tag: 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.

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?

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.

A Note from Writers Resist
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Americans are rushing around stocking up on toilet paper

By Marcy Rae Henry

 

In Himalayan India we used leaves

buckets of water and our hands

 

Best-selling tampons have applicators

because Americans are afraid to touch themselves

 

In Himalayan India we didn’t have tampons

We used rags and pads

but didn’t touch each other’s hands to say hello

 

When wiping with leaves or plants you have to know

which ones are poisonous and that’s different

from knowing the price of toilet paper at Sam’s v. Costco

 

They want to install outhouses in rural India

where people have only used the forest

 

Don’t women have enough problems on buses

without feeling vulnerable trapped in a shitbox at night

 

We learned to cut off tops of water bottles and pee in plastic

during an unknown night

With the tops we made spoons and flimsy guitar picks

 

At crowded train stations or bus stops food was sold

on plates of leaves that were tossed from windows

to degrade sooner than bones that are outlived by plastic

 

In Himalayan India we didn’t have many choices

for shampoo toothpaste or hair ties

We got whatever someone carried up the mountain

 

The States is mad about choice

about opening bars and closing borders

Some  see the lack of a mask as an act of rebellion

 

The Great American Rush on Toilet Paper

A virus that cannot space out everyone

And we are the perfect hosts when we don’t want to be

 

Marcy Rae Henry is a Latina born and raised in Mexican-America/The Borderlands.  She is a resister and an interdisciplinary artist with no social media accounts.  Her writing and visual art have appeared in national and international publications and the former has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship.  Ms. M.R. Henry is working on a collection of poems and two novellas.  She is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Fine Arts at Harold Washington College Chicago.

Photo credit: Copyright © 2020 K-B Gressitt.

Years that ask questions

By Marcy Rae Henry 

 

Black like me said John Howard Griffin and the world listened

(Black like losing electricity)

Black like me said Rachel Dolezal and the world blistered

(Black like the plague)

Black lives matter (now) say my neighbors

(Black like squares on a checkerboard)

Black is beautiful said Bill Allen (maybe) and the world paused

(Black like hair before silver)

Doesn’t matter if you’re black (or white) said Michael

(Black like a birthmark)

And what did I mean by ‘black’? asked Coates

(Black like seeds)

I became black in America said Adichie

(Black like pepper)

Black Power is a cry of pain said MLK

(Black like blindness)

The Black Revolution is controlled only by God said Malcolm

(Black like Goth)

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide
welling and swelling I bear in the tide wrote Maya

(Black like ink)
(Black like mud)

Education is indoctrination if you’re white—subjugation if you’re black argued Baldwin

(Black like leopard spots)
(Black like the unlucky cat)
(Black like guns)

Animals weren’t made for humans any more than black people were made for white
(or women for men) claimed Alice Walker

(Black like pupils)
(Black like funerals)
(Black like devil’s hooves)
(Black like beaches)

Las caras lindas de mi gente negra son un desfile de melaza en flor sang Susana Baca

(Black like asphalt)
      (Black like all colors blended together)
(Negro como mina de lápiz)
(Black like the absorption of all colors of the spectrum)
(Black like film noir)

Black, brown, beautiful—viviremos para siempre Afro-Latinos hasta la muerte lyricized Elizabeth Acevedo

(Black like eyeliner)
(Black like beans)
(Black like a cocktail dress)
(Negro como el opuesto de blanco)
(Black like the depths of Langston’s Africa)
(Black like a red-beaked swan)

Who would have thought, when they came to the fight
that they’d witness a launchin’ of a black satellite said Ali

(Black like charcoal)
(Black like black holes)
(Black like coal)
(Black like Christ)
(Black like Olbers’ Paradox)
(Black like the anoxic Euxine Sea)
(Black like the eight ball)

I am black because I come from the earth’s inside answers Lorde to the question she posed

 

Marcy Rae Henry is a Latina born and raised in Mexican-America/The Borderlands.  She is a resister and an interdisciplinary artist with no social media accounts.  Her writing and visual art have appeared in national and international publications and the former has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship.  Ms. M.R. Henry is working on a collection of poems and two novellas. She is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Fine Arts at Harold Washington College Chicago. Visit her website at marcyraehenry.com.