Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The Age of Phillis


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John Peters, Free Negroes, Are Married by the Reverend John Lathrop, Widower of Mary Wheatley Lathrop155Phillis Peters Prepares a Proposal to Publish a Second Book156Blues: In the Small Room Where He Lives with His Wife158Searching for Years but Failing to Find Documentation That Phillis Wheatley (Peters) Actually Gave Birth to Three Children Who Died in Infancy or Early Childhood159Lost Letter #23: From Phillis Peters, Boston, to Obour Tanner, Newport160Lost Letter #24: Phillis Peters, Boston, to John Peters, Boston-Gaol161Lost Letter #25: John Peters, Boston-Gaol, to Phillis Peters, BostonEPILOGUE: DAUGHTER/MUSE165Homegoing, or, the Crossing Over of Goonay, Lately Known as Phillis Peters167LOOKING FOR MISS PHILLIS191Acknowledgments195Notes on the Poems205Bibliography

      Prologue: Mother/Muse

      This is a song for the genius child.

      Sing it softly, for the song is wild.

      — Langston Hughes, from “Genius Child”

      Mercy, girl.

      What the mother might have said, pointing

      at the sun rising, what makes life possible.

      Then, dripped the bowl of water,

      reverent, into oblivious earth.

      Was this prayer for her?

      Respect for the dead or disappeared?

      An act to please a genius child?

      Her daughter would speak

      of water, bowl, sun—

      light arriving,

      light gone—

      sometime after the nice white lady

      paid and named her for the slave ship.

      Mercy: what the child called Phillis

      would claim after that sea journey.

      Journey.

      Let’s call it that.

      Let’s lie to each other.

      Not early descent into madness.

      Naked travail among filth and rats.

      What got Phillis over that sea?

      What kept a stolen daughter?

      Perhaps it was mercy,

      Dear Reader.

      Mercy,

      Dear Brethren.

      Water, bowl, sun—

      a mothering, God’s milky sound.

      Morning shards, and a mother wondered

      if her daughter forgot her real name,

      refused to envision the rest:

      baby teeth missing

      and somebody wrapping her treasure

      (barely) in a dirty carpet.

      ’Twas mercy.

      You know the story—

      how we’ve lied to each other.

      Book: Before

      And pleasing Gambia on my soul returns,

      With native grace in Spring’s luxuriant reign,

      Smiles the gay mead and Eden blooms again,

      The various bower, the tuneful flowing stream,

      The soft retreats, the lovers golden dream …

      — Phillis Wheatley, from “PHILIS’S Reply to the Answer in our Last by the Gentleman in the Navy”

      What is Africa to me:

      Copper sun or scarlet sea,

      Jungle star or jungle track,

      Strong bronzed men, or regal black

      Women from whose loins I sprang

      When the birds of Eden sang?

      — Countee Cullen, from “Heritage”

       c. Sometime in antiquity, date unknown

      Utilitarian—

      then,

      at some point,

      an embrace of beauty.

      A glow:

      the man waits,

      a picture in his head.

      He will claw

      out the dream’s

      tincture,

      pour it into mold—

      and in that dream,

      he has met

      the hyena laughing

      about chains. The man

      will pound metal

      to forget that

      grievous sound.

      He will master

      what was brought

      from earth,

      from viscera’s

      need—

      until his hands seize,

      he will do this work,

      and his son will do

      the same,

      and it will be written

      upon the griot’s skull.

       Yaay, Someplace in the Gambia, c. 1753

      after

      the after-birth

      is delivered

      the mother stops

      holding her breath

      the mid-wife gives

      what came before

      her just-washed pain

      her insanity pain

      an undeserved pain

      a God-given pain

      oh oh oh pain

      drum-talking pain

      witnessing pain

      Allah

      a mother offers

      You this gift

      prays You find

      it acceptable

      her