Phebus Etienne, my dear friend

This is my friend, neighbor, and a wonderful poet: Phebus Etienne. (The photo is by Rachel Eliza Griffiths.) I don't have the words yet to express what a devasting loss I feel knowing that she died of a heart attack last week. What do you say when you feel you are losing years of friendship and art you thought were coming your way? How can I say "art" with the heaviness I feel in my heart? When I want to say "culture"? When I want to say it with all the reverence I have for making culture, for taking the making of it as seriously as Phebus did? For what it can do? For what it means in a community of people who make it? I am missing her sweetness and her sharp critique. It is too early for me to find the words. Here are some of hers:



Chainstitching

After I buried my mother, I would see her often,
standing at the foot of my bed
in a handmade nightgown she trimmed with lace
whenever I was restless with fever or menstrual cramps.
I was not afraid, and if her appearance was a delusion,
it only confirmed my heritage.
Haitians always have relationships with the dead.
Each Sabbath, I lit a candle that burned for seven days.
I created an altar on the top shelf of an old television cart.
It was decorated with her Bible, a copy of The Three Musketeers,
freesia, delphinium or lilies if they were in season.
My offering of her favorite things didn’t conjure
conversations with her spirit as I had hoped.
But there was a dream or two where she was happy,
garnets dangling from her ears,
and one night she shuffled some papers,
which could have been history of my difficult luck
because she said, “We have to do something about this.”

She hasn’t visited me for months.
I worry that my life is an insult to her memory,
that she looks in and turns away
because I didn’t remain a virgin until I married,
because my debts will remain unforgiven.

Lightning tattoos the elms as florists make
corsages to honor living mothers.
I think of going to mass at St. Anne, where she was startled
by the fire of wine when she received her first communion.
But I remember that first Mother’s Day without her,
how it pissed me off to watch a seventy year-old daughter
escort her mom to sip from the chalice.

Yesterday, as the rain fell warm on the azaleas,
I planted creeping phlox on my mother’s grace,
urging the miniature flowers to bloom larger next year
like the velvet petals of bougainvillea that covered our neighbor’s gate.
I crave a yard to plant lemon and mango trees as she did.
Tonight I mold dumplings for pumpkin stew,
add a dash of vinegar for spice as she taught me,
sprinkle my palms with flour before rolling the dough between them.
I will thread my needle and embroider a coconut tree on a place mat,
keep stitching her presence in my life.

by Phebus Etienne (from The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, edited by Edwidge Danticat, and her unpublished manuscript, Chainstitching)

Black Enough

I traveled to Paris and the pork free,
lactose intolerant sorority sister questioned
how could I walk the decadent grounds of Versailles
when I had not traced my Dahomey roots.
Even Dessalines danced the minuet.
Europeans swim in my blood, surfacing in Victors
who walked ahead of me, signifying beauty
with cafe-au-lait or mulatto skin, straight noses and silken plaits.
They left or were driven from
milkweed forests and sugar cane acres,
after learning the simplicity of dried cod tossed in vinegar
and served over cornmeal at midday.
Luxury was siesta, open air baths at dusk,
lemon leaves scenting a tin basin.
Parisian men praised my pronunciation
while their women appraised my brown shell. Some secured
purse straps, pulled husbands closer
as we shared bridges arcing above the Seine.
Two centuries since we raised a flag,
rice farmers and professors sail wooden ships
through another middle passage.
I know the taste of Bordeaux, crème brulee,
the sweetness of standing over Napoleon's tomb.

by Phebus Etienne (from Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters)

Phebus reading at Spelman during the most recent conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (video Thanks to Amanda Johnston)

More about Phebus (I'll update as I hear of more sites):

poems from 2nd Avenue Poetry
tribute from Reggie H at Noctuary
tribute from John K at J's Theater
tribute from January O'Neil at Poet Mom
tribute from Oliver de la Paz at Pugnacious Pinboy
tribute from Amanda Johnston
tribute from Ruth Ellen Kocher at Ruth-E
tribute from Tayari Jones
tribute from Cherryl Floyd-Miller
tribute from Tara Betts
tribute from Kevin Vaughn

Funeral Arrangements

Wake: Friday, April 13, 4-9 pm, with a service by Father Francis Gargani at 7:30 pm; Andrew Torregrossa & Sons Funeral Home, 2265 Flatbush Avenue (Between Filmore Avenue & Avenue R), Brooklyn, NY, 718.253.5900.

Funeral Mass: Saturday, April 14, 9:15 am ; Saint Gregory the Great Church, Saint Johns Place & Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 718.773.0100.

Internment: Rosedale & Rosehill Cemetary, 355 East Linden Avenue, Linden, NJ 07036, 908.862.4990.