Blood and aguardiente.
Tallow, sweat. Eva Kaplan pushes
and screams, cussing in Yiddish,
her buttocks covered with sores
that never seem to heal. Isaac rumples
his straw hat nervously praying
to Adoshem, eyes stinging from sweat,
feet swollen in the tropical heat.
A young boy--barefoot and ragged--
switches a pig drawn by smells
of birthing. Eva’s black midwife,
Ma Josefa, cuts the umbilical cord
with machete, elemental iron,
chanting ancestral praises to Yemayá,
orisha of maternity; altar lights,
sea-blue, tongue the rag-doll goddess,
her fan shell, cowries, salted tobacco.
In her crib of reeds and wild cotton
the newborn breathes air, warm and maternal,
that rises from cane fields in the rainy
season. 1918: month of Tevet,
the Kaplans escape pogroms
and Bolsheviks, cursing the cold ground
of their birth. At first Cuba’s sun
nauseates Eva, gives Isaac headaches,
both break out with hives eating papaya.
They think the orishas are sotens--
devils--tambores and dancing terrify them,
Eva touches black children’s hair
to see if it’s real. The Kaplans struggle
to learn bozal Spanish, tongue of slaves;
home’s a dirt-floor hut thatched with guinea grass,
a tin charcoal stove on which to cook
black beans and rice, plantains, sweet potato;
without a shoykhet meat is unclean,
though Eva enjoys eating stewed hutia,
which she says tastes like hen.
Isaac peddles shmates--cheap stockings, ties,
cologne--in Sta. Clara’s sugar mills.
On holy days the Kaplans and their neighbors
share stories of Middle Passage horrors,
Red Sea miracles. Children of Olofi
and Elohim, Mackandal and Joshua,
Moses and Orúnmila, Ilé-Ifé and Israel.