Konch Magazine -

But Just a Few

I sit where a tree has a grand view to the sea

Where lizards come down from shady hideouts to say hello on breezy afternoons

I sit where the winds bring welcomed messages from the past

Where Earth gods sing reminding me we are but specs in an otherwise spotless world

There are few

But just a few that accept the give and take of our living planet

There are few just but a few who know the language of the grass and of the flowers

There are only a few but a very few who understand the movement of the insects and of the lions

There are very few so very few who know the meaning of black crows and of sea horses

I sit where silence loudly proclaims eternity its own.

Nancy Mercado

Kimako’s Blues Café**

We learned from you, Amiri Baraka

To take the Devil head on

To face down the barrels of our own holocausts

To set our own selves free with utterance of truth

We spoke our real names

Emerged from underneath floorboards and tunnels

To walk arm in arm through jungles of drawn guns

And volumes of libraries that lied

We nourished our souls with Jazz

And Blues lullabies

We learned to stand firm

To take the blows

To resurrect our families again and again

To rally

To sit-in

To take over

To re-right our selves

We learned from you, Amiri Baraka

What it is to be integral to one’s beliefs

We cooked soul-foods, read each other’s books

Walked down streets sounding off

For our right to be human

We rejoiced at our birthdays

Laughed loudly at *Pedro’s jokes

Staked our claim on this Earth

Our right to exist in joy and liberty

We learned from you, Amiri Baraka

That we’re All giants of history

Nancy Mercado

**The Baraka family created a small café in their basement and named it after Amiri’s sister;

Kimako.

*Pedro Pietri

Rites of Passage

for the Dolphins and Whales of Denmark and Japan

In the harbor

Men damn our existence

Plunging sickles into the hearts of our friends

Turning glittering blue waters

Into crimson savagery

They delight in hearing

Shrieking babies, mothers’ wailing in pain

Practicing their barbarism

On a sunny beach day

Another massacre to idolize the penis erect

Another genocide of kindness

To prove boys’ coming of age

This miscreation, cutthroat atrocity called Man

Nancy Mercado

Midway Holocaust

Albatross babies are dainty

Their whisks of features faintly there

Large infant eyes

And big round heads and bigger bellies

Thousands are born far from Man

A remote Eden

A shared bliss

Their elegant mothers

Glide over Pacific waters

Hunt carefully

Plucking morsels to feed their young

Albatross babies are dainty

Thousands die on a remote heaven

Their fine forsaken mothers

Watch an expanding graveyard of infants

Wail at the sight of their chocking children

Consumed by plastics

Their tiny collapsed bodies

Litter the seashores of paradise

Far from Man.

Nancy Mercado