Essah Cozett
You taste like ginger,
freshly gathered from
my grandmother’s garden.
Behind our brick house
she buried seeds from
her decaying home.
Didn’t you know that
she too was transplanted
after the war.
After the soldiers
cut her bloodline,
she pursued a new plot.
Her passion fruit roots
perished in that foreign land.
No soil was shore.
Have you ever tried potting
paradise? Vines sometimes
grow between barbed wire.
Sometimes boundaries impart
new beginnings that still
carry spores of the past.
Destruction uproots
umbilical cords,
leaving spirits homeless.
We all desire to be
home, but battles
harvest displacement.
Nowhere to repair.
Nowhere to return.
Nowhere to rebuild.
Somewhere across the
Atlantic Ocean, salt
desiccated her memory.
I only have poems
to share lessons she
taught me as a girl.
Back when her garden
was full of ginger and
she would make me tea.
They say honey heals,
and you have brought
her back to me.
We must water her
seeds buried beyond
Bensonville and believe.
We must propagate
before we decay.
I can taste her last words.
Essah Cozett is currently a Doctoral Caribbean Literature and Languages student at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus. She is a first-generation Liberian-American, born and raised in Georgia. Her poetry explores African influences in the Caribbean and Latin America women’s empowerment, identity, and spirituality.
Cozett’s poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Moko Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Tonguas, Odradek, and The Odyssey Online.
