Nina Angela Mercer

Poem for the Bronx River

People call me Yeyeo, Iyalode, Oxum, 
Mami Sweet Water and Vulture Eyes, 
the one who dances many drums, she who spreads honey 
on hips, cries while laughing a warning, 
queen of night flying birds, river woman, 
black cormorant woman, some say Chola,
Chola Wengue, some know Aquahung.

My name is many truths and unknown.
I like to be called with brass bells sometimes. 
Sometimes I do not like to be called at all.

Bring me my sweets:

pumpkin filled with honey and cinnamon sticks, watercress
with five eggs lightly scrambled and baby shrimp, 
champagne and sweet beer.

I lounge atop cool rock after midnight, devour alewife herring,
blue fish, salmon, eel, and sweet oranges, juice dripping 
from my chin, a plump red hen if I am very thirsty.

I am deep amber and iridescent indigo light, shimmering
inside a rippling current, pulling out to the Sound,
a shining black sharp with night’s mysteries,
unforgiving under moon glow sometimes, I dance 
while I eye my lover, my kisses swallow deep, 
a whisper just behind your left ear.

I avenge the cruelties this world can levy upon the shoulders
of mortals, I gather my skirt, hold a dagger between my teeth,
I will reclaim a life for a life, I am sacred waters.

People think I am what they need, all sweetness and good times,
lovers carrying sunflowers, a sensual dance in the rain, bills paid
finally, a baby in the belly, plenty mango and dark rum on a hot night,
a straw hat covering sleepy eyes, long legs propped against a wood
railing on the porch, dragonflies mating in June, 
monarch butterfly’s gentle touch, tickling a wrist just so. 

But I am also what remains, ripe with life 
decaying and thriving all at once.

If I weren’t myself, I would be still. 
I remember every prayer whispered here,
every lover’s kiss, every wanderer making a bed 
along my banks, washing here, every canoe 
carrying the laughter of children, every fisherwoman
or man, every tree root and limb, every piece of trash,
every body turned up at sunrise, every egret
dipping beneath me, hunting fish.

I will take my time and your tears, forever becoming,
always arriving and returning
your heart’s song. Every season is mine,
a fullness and insatiable.

Passage

I stand on the overpass, willed here
and waiting, looping a finger through a rusted fence,
looking down at sets of iron tracks –
two trains fast approaching.

I hunger for my own passage
from here to there,
from now 
to another time.

I want my own

Time devours this flesh, folding skin,
blurring sight, but I still dream echevaria,
anthurium, citrus paradiso blossoms, 
though I am a stale cliché 
pushed outside new language
by a history soiled with fucking, 
too much laughing, and covering my own bare self
with brass knuckle lies beating my soft places
down to fit inside whispers, hushed,
and high on everything the city offers
under a chorus of streetlights.

My truth is a wide-eyed woman
undone by silence. ‘Round the way, I am
old school home girl claimed by the block,
accessible as corners outside bodegas.

I crave easy refuge from brick
apartment buildings, fire escapes and 
hydrants on blast, bachata blaring from sub woofers,
police parading how they think they own us
bold down concrete, ignoring make-shift sacred shrines
for sons gone too soon
and paper flyers posted on light poles
for daughters gone missing over seven weeks.

I crave escape and elephant leaves, marigolds 
married to a way I do not know –

free living, stunning 
and ordinary as lightning 
flash, wind, and fast
summer rain.

I want my own

new fucking on fresh cotton sheets
marked by mutual heat, salt waters
and whiskey, a feast of limbs, a softness
twinned, eyes fresh as new moon,
mouths surprised and sighing,
a dance of deliberate fire.

I imagine time holding still, 
a lover bearing stories full with self 
as a whole city of pulsing roads called hold these hips, 
a raucous desire, a ritual returning, 
cleansing us from this chaos
of glass paneled skyscrapers shamelessly 
rivaling the idea of gods, revolving doors, 
too many cars carrying bodies 
across bridges.

I want my own

passion at the solar plexus, 
a coupling that can afford space 
for hummingbirds broken free 
from capture, candle wax, tarot cards
scattered across the hardwood floor
and left as magic prayer, spell sealed 
in a cross while wind whispered
through open windows. 

The steel tracks still promise
an impossible yet imminent elsewhere
without sirens, just beyond
the overpass, this willful waiting,
looping my finger through
this rusted fence.

When the two trains have long gone,
I will take this myth,
walk it home and call it mine.

Interdisciplinary artist, dramaturg, and scholar Nina Angela Mercer’s plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR; MOTHER WIT & WATER-BORN; and A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING. She is a multi-genre writer with work published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; Performance Research Journal; Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Press, 2018), and Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century (Duke University Press, 2020).