The Age of Phillis. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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      Prologue: Mother/Muse

      This is a song for the genius child.

      Sing it softly, for the song is wild.

      — Langston Hughes, from “Genius Child”

AN ISSUE OF MERCY #1

      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.