Enzo Silon Surin, Haitian-born poet, educator, publisher and social advocate, is the author of the chapbooks, A Letter of Resignation: An American Libretto (2017) and Higher Ground (2006). He is the recipient of a 2017 Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and is a PEN New England Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. Surin’s work gives voice to experiences that take place in what he calls “broken spaces” caused by political and social violence, believing that poetry is one of the many paths to healing and recovery. His poems have appeared in Transition Magazine/Jalada, Interviewing the Caribbean, jubilat, Soundings East, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, sx salon and Tidal Basin Review, among others. Surin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is an Associate Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College and founding editor and publisher at Central Square Press.
aperture
after Lucille Clifton
accused of flunking a test
as if I took it,
as if I studied day
and night and bombed it. I did not:
results were waiting for me
when I came
bustling out of my mother’s womb,
her pride and joy,
whose pigment, she feared,
there on her breast,
would Habitually
test hope’s resilience. I am
regaining memory every day,
cataloging names, dates
and places I was never supposed to
travel to on my own, without risking rope,
branch and a gullet full of bullets.