By Audre Wells

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Inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope” is a thing with feathers”, this poem talks about Hope as a fleeting, never-reaching entity in the Dominican Republic where Hope is a cultural and spiritual value within generations.

Hope, in my country, is the thing with leaves. 
Leaves greener than unripe plantains 
and longer than a lifespan.
Cut at the neck and drowned in boiling water, 
the everlasting taste swims in our bellies 
and spat back into the ocean—
the taste will linger in our mouths. 
Even after Hope’s uncrowning, 
new leaves will grow for more tea. 

Hope is the coconut that will drop onto my head.
Instead of blood,
coconut juice will pour out
making me sticky and sweet, 
not guilty
in this heat.  
Ringing true to the pueblo’s phrase: 
A curse hidden in a blessing—
attracting mosquitos. 
Do not trust Hope to let you in, 
for coconuts grow in every season. 

Hope is the guava tree that will cave in 
if I ever try to leave. 
Leaving me connected to a country
with a past larger than beasts, 
with Gods larger than heaven, 
and with me
smaller than a tropical flea. 
❀
The niguas that rest in flowers 
get sat on and stepped on and
swiped away with a careless flick or brush,
swiped away hopefully far enough, 
to land in the United States. 


Hope resides on a divided island, 
the midline drawn in fresh blood. 
From the sky, it’ll look like a marching line 
of niguas trying to hold the country together 
smashed between the concrete, buried into the soil. 
I’ll rake through the dirt, 
staining my hands with Haitian blood, 
looking for Hope tangled in roots or 
pressed against sediment. 
But I’ll only pick up small red bugs, 
whose bites sting, 
and make me regret 
digging at all. 

Sitting under Hope’s shade, 
the wind is clean. 
There is no sand trying to get caught in my eyes, 
trying to become the shore to my waterline. 
I am not anything beyond 
a human
searching. 

Process

The first line is actually taken from a short story I wrote for one of my classes last semester. The line was originally “Hope is the thing with leaves that resembles feathers.” The story combined Taíno (the indigenous people of the Dominican Republic) culture with personal experience creating a blur between my life and fantasy. With this poem I wanted to follow the same genre, using the intersections of mythology and culture to describe a universal feeling.

My mentor advised me to choose any themes or pieces from my original story and expand on them (something I recommend to everyone). This line spoke to me the most especially with the connection to Emily Dickinson. Like Emily’s poem, I wanted to play on the idea that Hope is always with us or following us, but in my poem I wanted Hope to seem more powerful than humans and add a tropical twist to it. The editing process involved the undoing of random capitals and punctuation and making sure every word (even the its) was intentional. Resulting in a piece that I’m really passionate about and proud of.