Jennifer Maritza McCauley

Poetry
2020

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is a writer, teacher and editor. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from Best of the Net, Independent Publisher Book Awards, Academy of American Poets and a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. She received her PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri and is presently fiction editor at Pleiades and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (2017) was released by Stalking Horse Press.

REBEL-ED LANGUAGE

I am a rebel language,

 

the wild bloodroot of

ancestral line.

 

I ain’t gonna speak in your

cusses nor cursivos, oye:

 

this talk

ain’t school-taught,

it’s ready for a gotdamn brawl.

 

whatchu ‘raidofman

tienesmiedo, mano?

 

what horrors could

possibly come from

these dumb,

dagger-words?

 

(Originally published in Luna Luna)

Jennifer Maritza McCauley