Mercy
By Brenda Cárdenas
Uncorset my fat suit, and bury me
in a chorus of strawberries, a forest
haunted by cicada suits left clinging
to toadstools and stones. Let bear paws
mix me in a handful of honey should bees
still swarm this noxious earth. Give
wolves license to muddle me like a sugary
cocktail or effusive stew. No box. I beg
you to strip me of this red nose, yellow-
collared clown suit and kayak me out
to the aquamarine cemetery where fall
cell phones and lighters, water shoes
and dimes, earrings and locked chests full
of secrets. Let my spent shell sup
like a suckerfish on this dumpster
and clean its sullied floor. Have mercy
on the home we have poisoned, blue body
we have boiled like the soup
we are destined to become. Have mercy
and add a bit of mint before you
wrap me in clean linen if you must.
Do not fasten my shroud, but let
it flutter in the wind’s whistle that carries
me to the velvet ear of a dog. Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and finalist for Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Cárdenas has served as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate and is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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