Catcalls to My Brain

by Nancy Mercado

           

No 1980’s tight young ass to pounce on anymore

No smooth skin to assault anymore

No frightened little girl to follow

Down cold shitty Lower East Side streets anymore

Now-a-days the boys catcall my intellect

Corner me in conference rooms

Universities

In restaurants

¡¿Oye mami cuántos libros has leído?!

¡No sabes na bruta!

Where did you graduate from mami?!

Your university degree means nada nena!

They attempt to inflict

Injuries with blank pages

To drown me out

Under piles of exclusions

To erase my existence

To whittle me down

To a stub

N o t h i n g

Silence.

These days my catcallers

Are the intelligentsia

Postmodern jeering elitists

Hyperbolic hipsters swooping in to take charge

Our modern-day land grabbers

The white settlers of the information age

Revolutionary revisionists

My cat-calling boys come with females in tow these days

Sold out dames of trendiness

Fast talking fools

Puking memorized conceptual hullabaloos

Living delusions

They are lost souls

Existing in their own holograms of fame

Convinced masses in the world

Know their name

Believe their immortality

Don’t my catcallers understand

They have yet to be born?

* * * * *

© 2020 Nancy Mercado

"Catcalls to My Brain" was first published in Gargoyle (2020).

Nancy Mercado is the recipient of the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement presented by the Before Columbus Foundation. She was named one of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Frederick Douglass on the occasion of his bicentennial by The Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. For more information go to nancy HYPHEN mercado DOT com.