francis bacon’s black mouths: a love poem
painted over and over because he wanted
to perfect blackness in different states of mouthness
the black before the scream
i’ve printed ‘em to put over the bed
folded into origami orgasms
as if doing squats over a speed bump
onery alley critters—! no two sound alike
no matter what you say
more is less in the long run
oak-aged ale
and opium
but love—
looks like a pot pie looks like love in the mouth
my love—i’ll pump your heart empirically
kill ‘em with kindness and expectorants
spewing from my black mouth
mouth i love pot or pies or periodontal surgeons
kneeling in front of a frontrunner
never felt so god
gnawing on truthisms with jagged little teeth
jam perhaps blackberries jammed into the mouth
to replace the fist
i’ve iodine stains
henna-like investments
and : i of the tiger
pronounce you wooed
under dark lights casting a cast-iron shadow
i’ll continue to woowoo with my juju
detail the mouth going south
going black where it doesn’t belong
at times bleached and iron-clad
that after-heat black
that passion in the bedroom
the courtroom
manslaughter of the mouth
a mouth in blackness
plague-eaten and purple taken into account
the glistening shrieking wetness
that scream to a whisper
that mouth open and black for more
Marcy Rae Henry
Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands who’s had motorcycle crashes in Mexican-America, Turkey, and Nepal. She is the author of the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press), dream life of night owls (Open Country Press), and We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press). Her poetry collection, death is a mariachi, won the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize and will be published in spring 2025. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest, and Kaveh Akbar recently chose her fiction collection as a finalist for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. MRae is a professor of English, literature, and creative writing at Wright College, Chicago, a Hispanic Serving Institution, where she serves as Coordinator of the Latin American Latino/x Studies Program and received Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society’s 2023-2024 Outstanding Educator Award. She is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts. marcyraehenry.com
