“testify”: To the Joy Around Us
Unsplash June 2018, Sunset Through Cyclone Fence, Oskars Sylwan, accessed 3 February 2022
Poem: “testify”
“testify” by Dr. Eve L. Ewing is the dose of hopeful energy you didn’t know you were in need of, & with assertive positivity each line of the poem swells & expands until you’re enveloped, until it embraces you and you’re embracing the small beauties found in your days, thankful. published online at poets.org, this poem stands before you not to surreptitiously convey a moral directive or meaning nor to call you to action, but to humbly deliver the message of blessings & joys that can be overlooked in favor of the hardships & strife of the world around us.
the moment this poem came to my email, & i read it, i felt up-lifted. it arrived at one of those moments when it was most welcomed & most poignant & that felt as though the hand of fate had nudged it in my direction because, let me tell you, i needed the positivity in this poem, & it has such a wide & universally necessary message of joy that i knew i’d read & drink about it. i truly hope you enjoy it as much as i do.
“In times of grief, it’s easy to take account of the world’s many hurts; poets like Ross Gay have taught me never to do so at the expense of its delights. I wrote this poem at the home of my dear friend Hanif Abdurraqib. It calls upon me to think of friendship and upon the reader to count the blessings of a day. It’s a nod to the Black church practice of testifying—of standing before a listener to bear witness to the ways you have been saved, blessed, and protected.”
— “About this Poem”
Eve L. Ewing
poets.org online, January 28, 2022
the poem’s positivity is felt strongest through its language which is informal & familiar as if you were sitting at the table of a friend or relative. the lack of capitalization, particularly of the first person singular subject pronoun “i”, reinforces this informality while also creating a sense of kinship, that the speaker doesn’t want to stand above or apart from the reader & that, instead, they are equal in this world to both you & the man “who wore the walk / of hard grounds & lost days”. the absent capitalization, which herald the beginnings of sentences, are working in conjunction with missing punctuation like commas & periods to signify, in a way, that these small blessings don’t have beginnings nor ends because they’ve always been there and will continue to surround you.
ampersands also replace the conjunction “and” in the poem to bring everything that the speaker is thankful for closer together on the page & that more closely connects one joy to another in a train of thankfulness whose inertia culminates in the chorus “here to tell / you that we are not dead”. it’s in this final chorus that “i” & “you” are joined into a “we” &, together, the poem takes us by the hand to celebrate the smallest & most overlooked joy that there is: “we are not dead we are not / dead / yet”. in this important and perhaps small way “testify” becomes more than a testification to small joys and transcends into a litany against the everyday threats of negativity & sadness, an important reminder that “still we are golden”.
Cocktail:
Get Lifted
i stand before you to say
that today i walked home
& caught the light through
the fence & it was so golden
i wanted to cry & i lifted
my right hand to say thank
you god for the sun thank
you god for a chain link fence
& all the shoes that fit into
the chain link fence so that
we might get lifted god thank
you & i just wanted to dance— “testify”
Eve L. Ewing
poets.org online, January 28, 2022
Get Lifted is a bright, floral cocktail inspired by the Chrysanthemum cocktail which is a reverse Martini or Manhattan of sorts. And while Get Lifted is not as low abv and vermouth-forward as the Chrysanthemum it does lean into more nuanced flavor profiles through Elderflower and Banana Liqueurs, Dry Vermouth, and a little Benedictine. The main deviation comes from the Chamomile-Infused Reposado Tequila which imparts a subtle grassy herbaceousness from the tequila and a sweetness from the time it spent aging in a barrel, all of which is intensified through the subtle floral flavors of the tea. For this tequila I specifically chose DeLeón Tequila because it’s Black owned and they age their Reposado and Anejo tequilas in ex-French Wine casks as well, lending an additional layer of flavor.
This cocktail becomes a light aperitif style cocktail that can be enjoyed before dinner or while making it, or ahead of time before guests visit. It stores and travels well, and you could easily batch ahead of time and store in the fridge for ease of serving. To Batch simple multiply all of the ingredients by four (using 0.5oz of Benedictine) and express the peels from one whole lemon over the batch making sure to peel the lemon over the top before expressing the peels since a lot of the oils are expressed in the act of peeling. Add 3oz of water to the batch and then bottle, or place in a food-safe and sealable container, and keep it in the fridge. This will keep indefinitely since there isn’t any juice to spoil, though I doubt it will last nearly that long.
Get Lifted
1oz Chamomile-Infused Reposado Tequila
2oz Dry Vermouth
0.5oz Elderflower Liqueur
0.5oz Banana Liqueur
1tsp Benedictine
3 Lemon Peels
Infuse the tequila: add 1 chamomile tea bag to 8oz (1c) Reposado tequila and let it infuse for one hour. Remove the tea bag and squeeze out what tequila you can, then repeat the process a second time with another tea bag. Place in a jar, seal & label.
Add all ingredients except lemon peels to a mixing tin, then express the three lemon peels directly over the cocktail as close to the liquid as you can.
Add ice and stir for 15-20 seconds or until well chilled and diluted.
Pour into a coupe or other stemmed glass and garnish with the trimmed and shaped lemon peels.