Lenelle Moïse

jazz is underwater vodou atlantis mute aborted ultrasound fetal fish in flood haiti's first cousin forcibly kissed by a hurricane called katrina. hot winds come one fat tuesday. old levee leak explodes. fixing funds gone to homeland security. soldiers stationed in iraq. said, jazz is underwater days like laissez-faire manna does not fall saviors do not save hunger prays to rage for resilience, improvisational genius implodes, anarchy duets with despair. bassist fingers loot—nimble like a deft pianist. said, vodou atlantis mute. the fragile eardrums of instant orphans get inundated with someone else's mama's soprano saxophone screams. (meanwhile televised tenor voices report monotonous drone to drown out) the deafening beat of funeral marchers can't swim. bloated trumpet carcasses, a singer swallows human sewage. her last note, a curse on america. aborted ultrasound. cacophonous warnings scatter brains. pedestrians hear calls to evacuate, escape, and think, how fast can on-foot run? the poor, the weary just drown. abandoned elders just drown. people in wheelchairs just drown. the sick in bed cannot leave. their doctors stay behind too. new emergencies engulf the e.r. swamped hospitals ain't hostels, ain't shelters. resources slim like hope. nurses stay behind too. their loyal partners will not leave. ill-fated rejects just drown. said, fetal fish in flood. outside, a breaking willow weeps like a father on his rooftop, murmuring his wife's last words: clutch tight to our babies and let me die, she had pleaded, you can't hold on to us all, let me die. she, too, like jazz, is underwater. her love, her certainty, will haunt him. their children's survival, a scar. sanity also loses its grip, guilt-weight like cold, wet clothes. eighty percent of new orleans submerged. debris lingers, disease looms. said, days like laissez-faire. manna does not fall. shock battles suicide thoughts. some thirsty throats cope, manage dirges in cajun, in zydeco. out-of-state kin can't get through. refugees (refugees?) remember ruined homes. a preacher remembers the book of revelations. still saviors wait to save. and the living wade with the countless dead while a wealthy president flies overhead up where brown people look up where brown people look like spoiled jambalaya, stewing from a distance in their down-there distress, said, he's free— high up—far up— vacation fresh—eagle up, up and away from the place where our protest sound started, still sings. american music gurgling cyclone litanies man cannot prevent, the man cannot hear.

you have to understand it was so hot sand as far as the eye could see sand in teeth a sealess life every step a sinking a scratch every storm more sand no sweat when we danced pure salt in our lovemaking i tried to spit once it came out like a whistle my first period curry powder old wives spoke of tears we thought they were senile laughter was our wettest thing we prayed often to no one we believed in music dry palms clapping dust on ankle bracelets we threw tabla and daff caught spirit and sagat a blaring life the wailing or caesarean births widows' eyes wept wind even our tongues were tanned something sun-dried in every recipe rays were babies' first words you have to understand we forgot how to be thirsty mud by then was primitive splashing the stuff of legend only giddiness quenched us we were dizzy all the time in the world all the time then we heard him grumbling to himself something about forty something about a flood clad in sheep's wool he reeked of wolf shit something about monogamy something about shelter i thought: this must be heatstroke i thought: the brain of a six-hundred-year-old i thought: he is a conceptual artist the ark an installation his masterpiece took years took trees got bigger he was our favorite dirty joke beloved schizophrenic neighbor then he started preaching then he kidnapped pigs mosquitos doves things that wanted to eat each other stuffed onto the same boat we threw our heads back we slapped ashy knees we mooned him threw hot stones we streaked whistled in his face kicked the baking ship laughter was our thunder thing the lucky ones died laughing for centuries he warned us condescending motherfucker foaming at the mouth sweat dripping from his beard condensation how did we miss it? i have no words for the first drop cooling the cheek grandfathers raised their arms lightning made the children leap sizzle gave way to drizzle humidity taught humility we opened our mouths swallowing everything the clouds begat clouds began to bite us back panic soaked our slouching spines the instruments drowned first we played them sopping out of tune denial gave way to rivers i fell into a puddle my very first shiver the shock of cold water made me orgasm so all the times before had been dry heave? so this was mourning this was mikveh? the sky from blue to za'atar hail we choked god's vomit filled our lungs apologies bellyflopped reaching went out of reach we ran from high desert to highest mountain to whirlpool or choral grief if noah had keen merciful he would have taught us how to swim instead he saved two mice muttered prayers shut the door the best belly dancers became mermaids the dinosaurs learned to fly we never saw a rainbow our grave stones coral reef

i want to talk about haiti. how the earth had to break the island’s spine to wake the world up to her screaming. how this post-earthquake crisis is not natural or supernatural. i want to talk about disasters. how men make them with embargoes, exploitation, stigma, sabotage, scalding debt and cold shoulders. talk centuries of political corruption so commonplace it's lukewarm, tap. talk january 1, 1804 and how it shed life. talk 1937 and how it bled death. talk 1964.  1986.  1991.  2004.  2008. how history is the word that makes today uneven, possible. talk new orleans, palestine, sri lanka, the bronx and other points or connection. talk resilience and miracles. how haitian elders sing in time to their grumbling bellies and stubborn hearts. how after weeks under the rubble, a baby is pulled out, awake, dehydrated, adorable, telling stories with old-soul eyes. how many more are still buried, breathing, praying and waiting? intact despite the veil of fear and dust coating their bruised faces? i want to talk about our irreversible dead. the artists, the activists, the spiritual leaders, the family members, the friends, the merchants the outcasts, the cons. all of them, my newest ancestors, all of them, hovering now, watching our collective response, keeping score, making bets. i want to talk about money. how one man's recession might be another man's unachievable reality. how unfair that is. how i see a haitian woman’s face every time i look down at a hot meal, slip into my bed, take a sip of water, show mercy to a mirror. how if my parents had made different decisions three decades ago, it could have been my arm sticking out of a mass grave i want to talk about gratitude. i want to talk about compassion. i want to talk about respect. how even the desperate deserve it. how haitians sometimes greet each other with the two words “honor” and “respect.” how we all should follow suit. try every time you hear the word “victim,” you think “honor.” try every time you hear the tag “john doe,” you shout “respect!” because my people have names. because my people have nerve. because my people are your people in disguise i want to talk about haiti. i always talk about haiti. my mouth quaking with her love, complexity, honor and respect. come sit, come stand, come cry with me. talk. there’s much to say. walk. much more to do.

the children of haiti are not mythological we are starving or eating salty cakes made of clay because in 1804 we felled our former slave captors the graceless losers sunk vindictive yellow teeth into our forests what was green is now dust and everyone knows trees unleash oxygen (another humble word for life) they took off with our torn branches beheaded our future stuck our breath up on pikes for all the world to see we are a living dead example of what happens to warriors who in lieu of fighting for white men's countries dare to fight for their own lives during carnival we could care less about our bloated empty bellies where there are voices we are dancing where there is vodou we are horses where there are drums we are possessed with joy and stubborn jamboree but when the makeshift trumpet player runs out of rhythmic breath the only sound left is guts grumbling and we sigh to remember that food and freedom are not free is haiti really free if our babies die starving? if we cannot write our names read our rights keep our leaders in their seats? can we be free? really? if our mothers are mud? if dead columbus keeps cursing us and nothing changes when we curse back we are a proud resilient people though we return to dust daily salt gray clay with hot black tears savor snot cakes over suicide we are hungry creative people sip bits of laughter when we are thirsty dance despite this asthma called debt congesting legendarily liberated lungs

When I am a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, I am called an ancestral soul, a ti gran moun, a little old person. Adults study me and decide that I am wise beyond my years, mature for my age, emotionally ripe. I am told it is unusual to meet a five-ten-fifteen-year-old girl who does not slouch or mumble or speak in monosyllables. When I do the things that come naturally to me—when I hold my spine up erect, when I wait my turn to speak, when I speak having listened, carefully, when I enunciate, when I look grown-ups in the eye—I am told I must have “been here before.” "How do you know?" one college professor asks me after she has seen a psychologically violent play I have written at age nineteen. "How do you already know?” In high school, I charm my teachers. They encourage me to write speeches about feminism that I recite for International Women's Day at City Hall or deliver as part of conference panels at local universities. “If you were older," they tell me, "we would probably be friends.” One of them even flirts with me. Among my peers I exist somewhere between amicably mysterious and irrevocably dorky. The popular kids greet me in the hallways, but they never invite me to their beer-drenched parties. I will never play Spin the Bottle. I will never play Seven Minutes in Heaven. My mother tells me she is protecting me from boys, but the truth is, after I do my homework, she wants me to type up another family friend’s résumé or resignation letter. At home, I am a bridge, a cultural interpreter, a spokesperson, a trusted ally, an American who is Haitian too, but also definitely American. The children of immigrants don't get to be children. We lose our innocence watching our parents' backs bend, break. I am an old soul because when I am young, I watch my parents' spirits get slaughtered. In Haiti, they were middle class. Hopeful teachers. Home owners. They were black like their live-in servants. They donated clothes to the poor. They gave up everything they knew to inherit American dreams. And here, they join factory lines, wipe shit from mean old white men's behinds, scrub five-star hotel toilets for dimes above minimum wage. Here, they shuck and jive and step and fetch and play chauffeur to people who aren't as smart as they are, people who do not speak as many languages as they do. In the 1980s, they are barred from giving blood because newscasters and politicians say that AIDS comes from where they come from: Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a black magic island that spawns boat people and chaos, a place of illiterate zombies, orphan beggars and brazen political corruption. When I am a child, my childhood is a luxury my family cannot afford. Their dignity is not spared, so my innocence is not spared. They are humiliated and traumatized daily, so I become a nurse to their trauma. I am told too much, so I know too much, so I am wise beyond my years. When I am six, my mother tells me that when she found out she was pregnant with me at age nineteen, she “tried to kill the baby." She says "the baby," as if it isn’t me she’s talking about; as if I am not the expensive, scandalous daughter who forced my way into her world despite the abortion-inducing herbal teas she drank and her frantic leaps off of small buildings. When I am sixteen, my father calls me on the phone to, inevitably, weep. He says, "Living in this country, I have learned not to hope for things. Only you are my hope. Only you." So—yes, I grow up fast.