**On sipèstisyon by Mckendy Fils-Aim**é

by Tyler Truman Julian

Sipèstisyon is the Kreyol (Haitian) word for superstition. It is also the title of Mckendy Fils-Aimé’s debut poetry collection. The collection tracks superstitions inherited by Fils-Aimé’s speaker from his immigrant parents and the colonial legacy of Haiti. The superstitions in these poems range from cautionary fearmongering to expectations of propriety and, whether or not the speaker “never did / believe” them, the impact of these beliefs continues to shape the narrative of the collection, serving as a concrete image of culture and family (“on superstitions”).

In this way, sipèstisyon offers a panoramic view of the speaker’s life as he navigates questions of identity, language and familial loyalty in the United States. This is no Pollyanna narrative of immigration—and it is not all horrible; the collection presents moments of beauty and pain in its lyrical storytelling. “pâté” captures the complicated blending of good and bad in Fils-Aimé’s story of immigration:

            i hate rush hour, but i endure gridlock
            in the belly of a Boston suburb to buy pâté
            at a new Haitian bakery. the new Haitian bakery
            is, in fact, Haitian. no one there cares
            about my English or how i order
            in broken Kreyòl because it’s still Kreyòl.
            i whisper ou gen pâté poul ak viande bef?
            as if a low voice can hide poor syntax.
            in my second language, i am a boy
            again, shy & timid, but excited to eat
            both beef & chicken pâté like i did once,
            when i still needed my mother & father
            to be harbingers of small pleasures,
            & i rummaged through the pastry boxes
            or brown bags that survived the hour drive
            my parents would make from Mattapan—
            & the only Haitian bakery within a hundred miles—
            to Manchester. i’d bite into each pâté,
            never noticing the fawn-coloured flakes
            falling away, descending onto my shirt
            or, like seeds of a wind-kissed dandelion,
            floating slowly towards the ground.
            i was fluent in Kreyòl. today, i am fluent
            in speaking English when i shouldn’t,
            but today, in a rare & awkward moment, i don’t.
            the clerk watches my tongue turn like a key
            in the ignition of a car that’s been sitting
            when she says nou pa gen okenn pâté
            viande bef: we don’t have any more beef
            pâté & i ask èske m ka achte yon pâté mori?
            can i buy a codfish pâté? & she replies oui
            & nearby a patron nods, as if to say good choice.

By the time the reader engages with “pâté,” the collection’s overarching narrative has been more or less established—that Fils-Aimé’s speaker came of age amid a tumultuous home life, sometimes involving violence, developed a fraught relationship to language and struggled to establish himself comfortably within his family. Like the superstitions imparted in his childhood, these other dynamics come to shape his adulthood and sense of self.

Late in the collection, Fils-Aimé’s speaker seems to come to embrace his complicated identity, not because it is perfect, but because it is his and hence emphasizes his resilience. This is made plain in “bilingual,” which immediately follows “pâté”:

            when they say we speak broken French.
            they’ve never had to reassemble the remnants
            of their mother tongues after mourning

            the remnants of their mothers.
            they don’t know that Kreyòl is a kintsugi cup.
            when the buccaneers dropped our dialect
            against Ayiti’s shores, we pieced it back together

            with whatever was left lying around.
            now each time we open the china drawer
            of our mouths, there’s copper
            more than anything else. so what

            if our teacups weren’t glued with gold.
            don’t they still shimmer
            in the sun? don’t they still hold water?
            can’t you still press one to your lips & drink?

Coming to understand cultural identity, while not easy for Fils-Aimé’s speaker, is a cleaner process than attempting to understand the pain existing in his family unit. The speaker explores the struggle of coming to grips with the reality of his family life in “one day you’ll both be dead”:

& all i’ll have left are therapy copays,
worksheets, & bad wound logic.

all i’ll have is a list of people
i’ve hurt & how many times

they’ve chosen to forgive me.
forgiveness: a chorus of grace

echoing in the halls of my worst days.
i’ve invoiced you for apologies

but you’ve repaid in apologias:
a wealth of excuses for your hands

clamping around my young throat.
sometimes i want a home

built on the grounds of half-hearted
repentance, for you to owe no debt

to the bank of careless rearing.
some days truth is a relative

who can only afford to call me
but i know i’ll see him soon.

what i’m trying to tell you is
this poem is a past-due bill.

I’ve cut the power.

Unable to separate from the past, the speaker accepts it, knowing that what he wants may change, that he will rarely get what he wants and that in writing the poem he is asserting himself in a way he has not before.

sipèstisyon is a collection for our times, while also embodying a timelessness. This collection will stand the test of time for its beautiful and clear-eyed interrogation of family life and the immigrant experience. It belongs on reading lists with the likes of Sharon Olds and Ocean Vuong. This is not a collection of either/or. sipèstisyon is a collection of all—all the things that make us who we are—and all readers will find something illuminating, lovely or relatable in its pages.

In case you missed it—check out Mckendy Fils-Aimé’s poem, "the lougarou discusses origin,” in The Shore

On sipèstisyon by Mckendy Fils-Aimé

by Tyler Truman Julian

**On sipèstisyon by Mckendy Fils-Aim**é