The Pride LA and West Hollywood Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace would like to introduce Féi Hernandez featuring their latest work titled Double Dutch Nymph.
Féi Hernandez (they/them) was born in Chihuahua, México and raised in Inglewood, CA.
They are a trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer. Féi is the author of Hood Criatura, published by Sundress Publications, 2020. Their writing has been featured in Poetry, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier, NPR’s Code Switch, Immigrant Report, Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (Columbia University Press, 2019), Hayden’s Ferry Review Issue 64, BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT, and PANK Magazine.
Féi is a certified Reiki and Akashic Records practitioner who utilizes a decolonial approach to ancestral energetic healing. They collect Pokémon plushies. Féi is the President of Gender Justice Los Angeles and is a Co-Founder of the ING Fellowship.
You can purchase Féi’s book Hood Criatura on Amazon.
DOUBLE DUTCH NYMPH
or it can.
nail polish don’t make me less a boy.
or it can.
i’m that little chubby girl on the blacktop with two long ponytails and breakfast on her shirt dozing at the classroom hum of a white teacher.
one smack
jump in.
jump, jump.
smack twice, it’s recess.
turn red cheeks,
heavy ass breathing,
but at least you have friends.
hot cheetohs in ziploc
bags. lucas. limón.
chile.
imported mexican
candy. i’m sweet and mad,
tomato face, red dot sitting
sassy gay boy. crying pleading
for no more detention. i want my pencil box.
i hide my Pokémon cards there. call my moms she don’t even
spik english. but please
don’t call her, she’ll find a way.
one smack.
jump in.
jump, jump
after the second.
stupid! you got his shirt? dig it in the sand! i help you! run away from the boys. stare at the boys in the field
stead of catching butterflies. don’t tell anyone tho.
this don’t look like a butterfly, its brown. this is not good luck.
it tickles.
climb. you can’t fatty! i’m gonna call the teacher! bloody mary!
i can’t hold myself on the monkey bars! I’m falling! break the mirror, do it!
run out the school!
i am still a boy and a girl.
boy, boy,
jump.
girl, girl, smack, jump.
we’re not allowed to spik spanish. so stop.
what do you do alone with that teacher in that class?
i learn to spik with my mouth. i follow his lips.
another one, americana lady, she holds my hand
to write. i’m gonna ask my cuzin to paint my nails tomorrow.
there is a boy in me this time. i can’t share more of me with you no more.
there is a girl in me this time. stop asking me for more. imma walk to my cuzin’s. cus i can’t give you no more. one smack.
jump in.
jump, jump,
ma knows god loves me anyways.
smack twice, jump out,
come out, i’m god, i say.
what color for nails you got? paint my nails cuz they didn’t like it.
— Féi Hernandez
