In El Batey, My Father’s Foot Lit a Fire

Sophie Maríñez
Professor of French
Borough of Manhattan Community College

First published in The Caribbean 
Writer Volume 31 New Vistas: An 
Evolving Caribbean (2017): 91-93. 
“In El Batey, My Father's Foot Lit a 
Fire” is inspired by Juan Bosch's 
short story “Luis Pie,” narrated from 
the perspective of Luis Pie's son.

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Caribbean Literature, 
Haiti, Migration Studies, Domini-
can literature, República Domini-

cana, Haitian-Dominican Relations

B I O

Sophie Maríñez is a Mellon/ACLS Fellow and a Professor of French at the Borough of 
Manhattan Community College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. 
She is an awardee of the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH). Her poetry has 
appeared in The Caribbean Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Small Axe Literary Salon, 
and The Cincinnati Romance Review. 

© 2014 Sophie Maríñez
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

111

Jan Both: Landscape with a 
Draughtsman

(January 20, 2022 / 08:53:12)

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112

In the cañaveral near El Batey
a wound on my father’s foot 
made him crawl 
on the dirt.
In the dark. 
Pray to Bondyé. 

Crushed by his pain, 
he didn’t see the fire, 
until it came too close 
and wild.

I saw my father 
coming home,
hands tied in ropes,
dragged on the dirt
by horses 
and the men of Greed.

His face full of bruises, 
blood and wounds.
They had accused him 
of lighting a fire
in the cañaveral…

In El Batey, My Father’s Foot Lit a Fire
reading Jorge Manrique in Río Piedras

To Luis Pie—
The two of them

—In homage to the Dominican children 
of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.

In the cañaveral near El Batey
a wound on my father’s foot 
made him crawl 
on the dirt.
In the dark. 
Pray to Bondyé. 

Crushed by his pain, 
he didn’t see the fire, 
until it came too close 
and wild.

I saw my father 
coming home,
hands tied in ropes,
dragged on the dirt
by horses 
and the men of Greed.

His face full of bruises, 
blood and wounds.
They had accused him 
of lighting a fire
in the cañaveral…

(January 20, 2022 / 08:53:12)

122815-1b_CaribbeanQuilt_Vol6_rev.pdf  .112