Geoffrey Philp
Yemaya
When I began to gather plastic foam and bits
of wood to build a raft that nobody said would take
me past the sentinels and into the Florida straits
that can change from breath to breath, the neighbors
thought I had become as desperate as my cousin,
Esmeralda, who they said should have held on until help
arrived to rescue her when her building was on fire.
But instead, she climbed to the roof and made a choice
between the certainty of the flames and the possibility of air.
Yemaya, Mother of Fishes, protect me on these waters
that are as treacherous as Fidel’s promises.
Sanctify the benediction of egrets at dawn that greet
skittish petrels walking on water. For if your compassion
shields the thinning hairs of my crown and protects the least
of these creatures, then surely you will understand
that to save my family, I had to leave them behind.
Distant Cousins
The doubts remained with me these many years,
“maybe we are part Jewish,” and returned
when I tried to escape the endless construction
on the Beach and ended up on Meridian
in front of this monument I could no longer
avoid, any more than the plea on my laptop,
“Our DNA suggests that we are related with a 98%
surety. Please help me to find our Sephardic
ancestors.” Under the shade of bougainvilleas
where I could barely see the fingers of that hand
trying to pluck the sun from the sky, for darkness
to cover bronze memorials for those bodies
scattered like ash over a field that had forgotten
names buried under grass, trampled by boots
that denied the presence of something holy in hands
that broke bread, lips that still whispered prayers
to Hashem, who had turned away from the babble
of men who worshipped their reflection
when they wiped steam from their mirrors,
I trudged down a hallway, narrow as the passage
to the Door of No Return, where one ancestor
sold the other for enough silver to buy a pair
of shoes and entered the circle where I could not
look up at the bodies, suspended as if in mid-air,
out of my fear of vertigo, of falling through time
to the first Shoah or hurtling into a future
in which I have no answer to the riddle
that haunts the hardiest survivor,
“Who are you, my son?”—except that I have stood
in this place, amidst the anguish of Arielites,
listening for an Avrit waiting to be named.
Homage to the Ancestors
Last night I awakened with a heaviness
on my chest; as if ballast stones from ships
that carried my ancestors, babalawos from Benin,
Sephardim from Portugal, and masons from Scotland,
whose bones built the walkway up to the crest
of the kirk in Westmoreland; as if an iron bit
had been squeezed between my teeth
and clasped to my nape until I was mute;
as if the torturers and tortured had exclaimed
in one breath from the back of my throat, “No more!”
So, at first light, I will build an altar at the threshold,
make a sacrifice of the firstborn rooster, shroud
my head in tobacco smoke, sprinkle the libation
of rum at the foot of the stairs to calm the restless
spirits that whisper when I wander these rooms
and stare out of windows for hours searching
for a sun that will not rise until I have forgiven all
who have passed these doors, who live through my blood.
Born in Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp is the author of the novel Garvey’s Ghost. His work has been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. A graduate of the University of Miami, Philp teaches English and creative writing at Miami Dade College.