Nancy Mercado

Friendship

for Miguel Algarín

The crescent moon

inside a perfect blue sky

and orange horizon 

just beyond explodes 

when I hear

Hold on

it’s the hospital...

And in my numbed state

I comforted others

In my numb state 

I go to sleep wondering  

when you’ll appear

take me to the ballet

out to dinner

to a fine French bistro

buy me trinkets

from a vintage thrift store

walk the length of 

Manhattan with me

sit in old neighborhood bars

for hours…

When you appear

you’ll appear

over and over

in that realm 

we’ll toast to our

beautiful young selves...

For 40 years

you held my hand 

here on Earth

Tell me…

How do I thank you?

Nancy Mercado was named one of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Frederick Douglass, on the bicentennial of his birthday, by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. She is the recipient of the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement presented by the Before Columbus Foundation.

Editor of the first Nuyorican Women Writers Anthology published in Voices e/Magazine of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College- CUNY, Mercado is a guest curator for the Museum of American Poetics. She has been featured on National Public Radio’s The Talk of the Nation, and on the PBS NewsHour Special; America Remembers 9/11 and is the author of: It Concerns the Madness  (a poetry collection), Las Tres Hermanas (a children’s coloring book), and is the editor of if the world were mine (a young adult anthology). Mercado  holds a doctoral degree in English Literature. Visit: nancy—mercado.com.