Elijah Elvin
We eat Tom-Tom amidst Anse d’Azur’s breeze
flicking away ticks with ease
as street preachers get to psalm 66
from 4 tongue licks
in front of Church St. Louis.
We say Amen in unison to cure the wickedness.
A wave of merchants
carries me through packed markets.
I harvest bargains of cacao beans
that revitalize my veins,
fermenting me with
bitter pride; further derived
from the hard scrubbing on
crops of sugarcane.
Memories yammed
with the exposure of
ancestral remains
that lie under sandy terrain.
Once they rested in
bushed vetiver
during the revolution.
Haitian Navy spirits still linger
on the coasts of Corail & Pestel.
A bark of a carpenter crafting
fisherman boats is undeniable,
his wood-dried hands
somehow stay unmarked
like fresh corn starch.
He curates chops for the conch-catchers.
Mè gi zansèt yo.
Elijah Elvin is in his junior year at Weinberg, with a Black Studies major and a Creative Writing minor in the Poetry Sequence.
