Nancy Mercado

Photo: by Ricardo Muñiz

I Come to See for Myself:
On the Anniversary of Hurricane Maria  

I fly in to see for myself 
below, blue tarps over the homes of my nation 
like those silver blankets that cover the souls 
of Mayan and Arawak children locked inside cages  
on the US mainland I left behind  

arriving home, I enter a mass of confusion 
plantain crops walloped in their places of birth 
five-foot-tall grass rebelliously advancing to heaven 
my mother’s lemon tree on her last leg 
hunched over, barely breathing  

I witness it for myself  
splintered wooden electrical poles 
held up by a neighbor’s twine 
trees arrowed through one another 
now growing sideways, surviving.  

Not the palm trees though 
the palm trees chose victory or death 
no in-between half-hearted living 
some growing new hair 
others simply guillotined 
by Maria’s detonation.  

I walk into the new growth of forest 
detect the low lamenting sounds of the injured there 
witness the anger etched into the undulating  
mountains surrounding me in the distance. 
I see the US cavalry arrived just in time  
Cortez and Columbus repackaged  
into a 21st Century nightmare  
armies in metallic flying machines 
using talking devices, exchanging messages  
in a foreign language through invisible airways  

I see the cavalry arrived to help  
themselves to the casinos they built  
to hurl paper towels at the local mortician  
to seize their opportunity to maximize  
on the extinction of the natives 
keeping them in drawn-out darkness 
with no power to run hospitals   
no shelter, with no water  

I cross the land  
from West to East, South to North 
to see the revelers and the ruined for myself 
to lend an ear to survivors and to the dead 
see shuttered schools for miles along the route, 
I run out of fingers 
on which to count them all  

part of the plan to ruin us 
a small voice reminds me.  

I walk along the turquoise shore 
lined of amputated homes 
crumbled fences  
collapsed doorways into the sea 
inside, bits and pieces of families remain 
their vestiges now  
across the Atlantic at the opposite end 
back in Ponce, I sit in my mother’s rocking chair 
watch my neighbor’s hummingbirds 
who’ve arrived to visit her ruby coral bells 
I think of my father’s strength  
in his humility, he walked in silence 
built a house to withstand  
a cyclonic catastrophe.  

I’ve seen for myself  
the natives are   
the majesty of this world 
together they’ve cleared the paths 
sawing, hewing through mammoth  
barriers of deceit and loathing  
retrieved their own water  
traversing the inundation  
of Washington’s elite  
that vowed to drown them  

they went about their lives 
by the light of a candle  
or an old wooden light pole 
they stitched back together  
with all the love on Earth  

maneuvering through a world of cadavers 
inside Maria’s eye  
amid the tantrums of the privileged   
a nation held its ground  
now, raises its foundation  
of ancestral eminence anew.  

Journey from the Plague 

Hellish sirens bend with distance 
through a day’s grey mists 
the sounds of birds emerge 
claiming my mind’s eye  

My childhood appears 
my mother shields us from 
freezing unbridled winds 
using a butter knife 
stuffing toilet paper into 
our rattling cracked window frames 
i follow her  
mimic her at 7 or 8 
i follow my mother from window frame  
to porous window frame  

Then  
sirens  
dissolve my memory again  

Returned to my cloistered quarantine 
do I hurl my self  
into a shuttered city 
emptied hollowed out  
save for ambulances transporting the dead 
birds and pigeons insects and mice 
the trees and the flowers of spring? 

The Wizard has Left the Planet

for Steve Cannon

Walking early morning New York City streets
inside my memories
I stumble down into the subway...

Hey Steve!
Hey Nancy! How you doin? 
Haven’t seen you in a thousand years! Have you heard from Ishmael?!

draws from his dangling cigarette
laughs and laughs
the poetic answer
the Wizard
his throne
a weathered sofa
young subjects congregate ‘round
they chatter in low smoky hums…

Fortune shows up at odd hours to stare at you square in the face.

I knew Steve here…
I’ll see Steve again in a thousand years.

Currently, Nancy Mercado’s critique of the Broadway musical West Side Story appears in Bigotry on Broadway (Baraka Books). She edited a special memorial section honoring the late founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Miguel Algarín; set for publication in KONCH Magazine this Spring 2022.

During the height of the COVID pandemic shortly after Algarín’s death, Mercado established and chaired the Miguelabration Committee; an organizing vehicle created to pay tribute to the late founder of the Nuyorican. Under her direction, the Miguelabration Committee held a groundbreaking six hour social media event via Zoom featuring poets and artists from around the world.

 In 2018, Mercado was named one of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Frederick Douglass by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. She received the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement presented by the Before Columbus Foundation in 2017.

Editor of the first Nuyorican Women Writers Anthology published in Voices e/Magazine of El Centro, Hunter College- CUNY, Mercado was featured on National Public Radio’s All of it, The Talk of the Nation, and the PBS NewsHour Special; America Remembers 9/11. She has authored, It Concerns the Madness, Las Tres Hermanas, and is the editor of if the world were mine.