This month we offer hollow reeds cut to play and a scar in a strewn map.
Next month we
CHANT
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Music is a stimulant
He tells me sitting out back as if the tree in front wasn’t dead.
He recently accepted five pillars, five prayers, five directions.
Movies, carnitas, mota… Abandoné también la música, he nods
at the speaker atop the table. Leaves gather beneath it.
Nos pregunta: Did you know Kadijah was fifteen years older
than the Prophet? As if a bendición. As if we didn’t.
Cuando hablamos en español they’re sure we’re saying:
Meet me later in a room that needs an invitation.
At the top of the deck a moon, between hollow reeds cut to play
different notes in the breeze and ‘Cruz de madera’ filters through
the speaker. ‘Una serenata por la madrugada.’ Do you want
to be buried like Mozart o prefieres una tumba como Chopin?
I prefer a pine box to a mausoleum blinking like Vegas. And a Cumbia
to a requiem. But really, I want to burn like trees. A danger to myself.
Clean as a Sacrament. Loud as a car alarm. No drum roll. No fade out.
Go out in a minor key that suddenly turns major.
A ranchera comes on. Four-chord progression. Music is often math.
He taps my finger and we’re holding onto each atop a dead-wood deck
where, over my shoulder, his eyes go deep into my house. Like a splinter
in a finger that has been so many places. It’ll be hotter in there without
the tree—he says to avoid saying: last call—pero mucho más brillante.
Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands. She grew up by the Fountain Creek and the Río Grande, waded in the Ganges, floated in the Dead Sea, down the Nile and the Yangtze and quarantined by the Chicago River. She is the author of We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press), the body is where it all begins (forthcoming from Querencia Press), dream life of night owls (forthcoming from Open Country Press) and red delicious (forthcoming from dancing girl press) and recently won the May Sarton NH Prize for Poetry for death is a mariachi, which will be published in 2025. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, and first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest. MRae is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts and an associate editor for RHINO Poetry. marcyraehenry.com
Untitled
a dream can stone dead. sprint her ghost in a
fever lightening. just like the body in a buckle
sleep: spring of a girl in the suite of birdsongs. spectre
lover. so sad, hope will masquerade. so glint, the
petals will route into cheek bones. there’s a\\
miracle dripping plasma. coursing in delusion.
a girl like a scar in a strewn map. like choices|
of yesterday wrecking trapezes in her bloom.
maybe life is a selfie in a dream, one snapshot
from soul. fleeting shadows. tabernacle of \\
bazaar but a dancing flame. a subtle rupture
like a scrawl sheet of a brief romance. like a
tinderbox: body, a raging fire = entry, skeletal,
& grief. what poem glories a god? what thaw
wind cuts a grace? love is a name. she hides|
orchid in an ambit colour. dangling dolour in
a skin hour. make pebbles of a man’s zest\\
the spirit limps hysteria, & cicatrices of iron
medley pallors abroad. what’s the uniquity of
noises around a campfire? lavenders rescind|
of fragrance, & ancestry levitate miracle in a
rustic gamete. then here is a replica: bet what
kills, stares knife in what throats. infants lurk \\
ozone with skylight. crackle of cackles, frail
savour of rancid breast milk. the dream sire
dead. prototype. ghost fever. and. and. and
Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo (he/him), SWAN IV, is of the Igbo descent, a graduate of History and International Studies, University of Uyo, Nigeria. He is a poet, essayist, and editor. He is the Honorary Mention of the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize For Literature, 2024 and was recently longlisted for the Unserious Collective Fellowship Prize, 2024. His work is published or forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson, Rough Cut, Muse UNN, Decolonial Passage, Brittle Paper, Poetry ColumnNND, African Writer Magazine, and elsewhere. He tweets @CPNwankwo.
This month we offer hollow reeds cut to play and a scar in a strewn map.
Next month we
CHANT
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Music is a stimulant
He tells me sitting out back as if the tree in front wasn’t dead.
He recently accepted five pillars, five prayers, five directions.
Movies, carnitas, mota… Abandoné también la música, he nods
at the speaker atop the table. Leaves gather beneath it.
Nos pregunta: Did you know Kadijah was fifteen years older
than the Prophet? As if a bendición. As if we didn’t.
Cuando hablamos en español they’re sure we’re saying:
Meet me later in a room that needs an invitation.
At the top of the deck a moon, between hollow reeds cut to play
different notes in the breeze and ‘Cruz de madera’ filters through
the speaker. ‘Una serenata por la madrugada.’ Do you want
to be buried like Mozart o prefieres una tumba como Chopin?
I prefer a pine box to a mausoleum blinking like Vegas. And a Cumbia
to a requiem. But really, I want to burn like trees. A danger to myself.
Clean as a Sacrament. Loud as a car alarm. No drum roll. No fade out.
Go out in a minor key that suddenly turns major.
A ranchera comes on. Four-chord progression. Music is often math.
He taps my finger and we’re holding onto each atop a dead-wood deck
where, over my shoulder, his eyes go deep into my house. Like a splinter
in a finger that has been so many places. It’ll be hotter in there without
the tree—he says to avoid saying: last call—pero mucho más brillante.
Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands. She grew up by the Fountain Creek and the Río Grande, waded in the Ganges, floated in the Dead Sea, down the Nile and the Yangtze and quarantined by the Chicago River. She is the author of We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press), the body is where it all begins (forthcoming from Querencia Press), dream life of night owls (forthcoming from Open Country Press) and red delicious (forthcoming from dancing girl press) and recently won the May Sarton NH Prize for Poetry for death is a mariachi, which will be published in 2025. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, and first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest. MRae is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts and an associate editor for RHINO Poetry. marcyraehenry.com
Untitled
a dream can stone dead. sprint her ghost in a
fever lightening. just like the body in a buckle
sleep: spring of a girl in the suite of birdsongs. spectre
lover. so sad, hope will masquerade. so glint, the
petals will route into cheek bones. there’s a\\
miracle dripping plasma. coursing in delusion.
a girl like a scar in a strewn map. like choices|
of yesterday wrecking trapezes in her bloom.
maybe life is a selfie in a dream, one snapshot
from soul. fleeting shadows. tabernacle of \\
bazaar but a dancing flame. a subtle rupture
like a scrawl sheet of a brief romance. like a
tinderbox: body, a raging fire = entry, skeletal,
& grief. what poem glories a god? what thaw
wind cuts a grace? love is a name. she hides|
orchid in an ambit colour. dangling dolour in
a skin hour. make pebbles of a man’s zest\\
the spirit limps hysteria, & cicatrices of iron
medley pallors abroad. what’s the uniquity of
noises around a campfire? lavenders rescind|
of fragrance, & ancestry levitate miracle in a
rustic gamete. then here is a replica: bet what
kills, stares knife in what throats. infants lurk \\
ozone with skylight. crackle of cackles, frail
savour of rancid breast milk. the dream sire
dead. prototype. ghost fever. and. and. and
Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo (he/him), SWAN IV, is of the Igbo descent, a graduate of History and International Studies, University of Uyo, Nigeria. He is a poet, essayist, and editor. He is the Honorary Mention of the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize For Literature, 2024 and was recently longlisted for the Unserious Collective Fellowship Prize, 2024. His work is published or forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson, Rough Cut, Muse UNN, Decolonial Passage, Brittle Paper, Poetry ColumnNND, African Writer Magazine, and elsewhere. He tweets @CPNwankwo.
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