Bodega | Mexican Folktale

Mexican Folktale

Listen to the rain: drunk, metallic.
This is how you came into the world.

We were tired of this kind of story:
Another girl and her imagined pueblos of pink cloud-structures.

No one can help a troubled soul, even the old folks knew.
One eye like a wild blackberry from God, a chestnut one
from the devil, and a tongue twisted up without lengua.

Only your grandmother loved you.

Now, you sound like rain when you talk.
Now, you walk backwards into her spotted sleeve.

Mary Robles is from El Paso, Texas. She is a current MFA candidate in poetry at Bowling Green State University and Poetry Editor at Mid-American Review. Her work has recently appeared in AGNI's "To Never Have Risked Our Lives: A Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing," The Adroit Journal, and Grain Magazine. She has poems forthcoming in Copper Nickel and elsewhere.

146 – April 2025

By Mary Robles

Mexican Folktale