Beyond The Watershed by Nadia Alexis
Reviewed by Noel Quiñones
Prayer like Water, Water like Prayer: A Review of Nadia Alexis’ Beyond the Watershed
by Noel Quiñones
Across Nadia Alexis’ debut poetry collection Beyond the Watershed (CavanKerry, 2025) prayer and water are consistent, but their definitions are not. At times an action or longing and at others a dream or a force, prayer and water are constantly transforming, just like the collection’s speaker. Navigating generational trauma, domestic violence, and sexual assault, Alexis’ poems describe a woman “buried alive / in a makeshift grave” dug by her parents, lovers, and at times, herself. While the title’s beyond invokes a future, the speaker arrives there covered in scars, w(e)ary of the present and the past.
In her forward to the collection, Evie Shockley writes that this work “charts the contours of a conceptual watershed…a region of Haitian and Haitian American womanhood” where each poem is precipitation draining into the speaker. Across these poems, water “rises & forces,” makes “the skin a wound,” and is an army “of waves / cut into sand.” Contrary to motifs of water as healing, the water of this collection is vicious, dismissive, and indifferent. Yet, Alexis complicates her own subversion by grounding her narrative in Haitian Vodou, where practitioners must place cups of water around them, inviting spirits to move through the water and hear their prayers. Water has no inherent identity; it reflects the intentions and actions of the prayers being moved through it.
In Alexis’ opening poem, “Watershed,” readers are introduced to the book's central dynamics between the speaker and her parents:
I arrive at my father’s feet a dying
mapou tree. He covers his eyes with
mud while goats feast on my fallen hair.
I hear my mother call for the Lord
to send just enough rain for our lungs
& her carnations to see a new season.
The speaker arrives at her father’s feet, insinuating subservience to this patriarch. She is “a dying mapou tree,” which are trees known for their ability to thrive anywhere, their branches tending to bend rather than break. In other words, despite the speaker's resiliency, she is dying, which the father does not wish to see. He not only covers his eyes but harms himself by using mud to do so. “Fallen hair” builds on the “dying” of the opening line, as the speaker doesn’t have energy to defend themselves as their body is feasted on by goats. As we move to the mother, the verb “hear” implies that she is far away. It also showcases a difference in action between the parents. Where the father ignores his daughter, the mother prays for “rain for our lungs / & her carnations.” Yet, this prayer is questionable as the mother prays for her family and her flowers equally, diluting the prayer for her daughter. The phrases “just enough” and “new season” further put this prayer in question as the daughter is in immediate need of care and yet this prayer does the bare minimum, focusing on the future, not the present. Formally, the tercets speak to the ways these three characters are intertwined, and Alexis’ sharp line breaks show us their divisions.
Split into seven sections, this collection anchors itself in six opening poems all titled “Prayer to Èzili Dantò” labeled I through VI. Èzili Dantò is an Iwa, a spirit in Haitian Vodou often represented as the hardworking, exhausted, and at times angry mother who personifies womanhood, love, and protection. Alexis opens the second section with “Prayer to Èzili Dantò I:”
He cut my tongue from its home
& left two roosters at war. Rain
betrays earth when it refuses
to join hands. Orphaned stories
still sit in my skin…
I
remember the names of every man
who filled my blood with grenades…
I lay in my own blood & remember
them enough to write them all dead.
The “he” here is a man of many names, the speaker’s father as well as lovers who mutilated her, putting her mouth at war with itself. Violence is written on the speaker's body, her blood is filled with grenades and orphaned stories—that is, narratives divorced from their origins, which is to say trauma stories—sit on her skin. However, the speaker is determined to “write them all dead.” The pronoun "them" is purposely vague. The speaker may be writing about her perpetrators and through doing so, annihilating the hold they have on her. Or, the speaker may be writing down her trauma stories, thus allowing the events to no longer be haunting her but, rather, be tethered to the past and thus put to rest. Here, prayer is concrete, an action grounded in the speaker’s facilities: her brain and her hand. Yet, when we arrive at “Prayer to Èzili Dantò II” ten pages later, we realize that the last two lines of the first prayer poem begin this one.
“Prayer to Èzili Dantò II” is a reversal of the assurance of “Prayer to Èzili Dantò I.” The speaker that was ready to “write them all dead” is suddenly made “a mango trail…instead of [a] bruising,” “given powers [she] never asked for,” and falling again & again “in what [she] think[s] is home.” Violence transforms the speaker; the power she had in the first prayer is now a power she never asked for. The home she made of her blood and bruising is not a true home. The speaker realizes she is echoing the violence done to her, not only implicating herself but the reader as we reckon with narratives of retribution that simply reproduce violence. The poem extends this implication by ending with the lines “People look at me in confusion & / say I must like being held underwater.” The double burden of domestic violence entraps the speaker, the violence inflicted by her loved ones and the violence of those who witness and blame the speaker for staying. Prayer in this poem is a heavy knowing, an acknowledgement of the past and present that feels inescapable.
All six of the prayer poems are linked by their last and first two lines, forming one long prayer built on cyclical contradictions. While one prayer dreams of “No rape, / no black eyes, no pockets or souls sucked / dry, no one to lead us away from this home,” another states, “Ma stayed. When I ask why, answers did little / to fill multiplying craters in my hands. I arrive,” as yet another asks, “do those who stay / on hurricane-prone land yearn to sleep / in a home that fails to deliver?” Prayer is no single action nor single dream but a space that holds them all, a space whose contours transform with our own histories, actions, and reactions. Just like with water, Alexis uses our preconceived notion of prayer to highlight its flexibility, its elusiveness.
Beyond the Watershed is a testament to the slow and cyclical process of survival, a transformation that consists of many transformations. Alexis documents the terrifying experience of giving yourself over to another, whether it is the violence of a lover, the dismissal of a father, or the resignation of a mother. In parallel, this is the vulnerability required in prayer and water. Both of these forces take their time, changing a person or a landscape slowly and sometimes, unpredictably. These poems force the reader to confront each harm, each escape attempt, and each failure that it takes for the speaker to “see a new season.” Yet, just as Alexis's speaker asks, “How many cups does it take to transform shame?” she answers, “surely surely there [is] something better.”
by Noel Quiñones
Across Nadia Alexis’ debut poetry collection Beyond the Watershed (CavanKerry, 2025) prayer and water are consistent, but their definitions are not. At times an action or longing and at others a dream or a force, prayer and water are constantly transforming, just like the collection’s speaker. Navigating generational trauma, domestic violence, and sexual assault, Alexis’ poems describe a woman “buried alive / in a makeshift grave” dug by her parents, lovers, and at times, herself. While the title’s beyond invokes a future, the speaker arrives there covered in scars, w(e)ary of the present and the past.
In her forward to the collection, Evie Shockley writes that this work “charts the contours of a conceptual watershed…a region of Haitian and Haitian American womanhood” where each poem is precipitation draining into the speaker. Across these poems, water “rises & forces,” makes “the skin a wound,” and is an army “of waves / cut into sand.” Contrary to motifs of water as healing, the water of this collection is vicious, dismissive, and indifferent. Yet, Alexis complicates her own subversion by grounding her narrative in Haitian Vodou, where practitioners must place cups of water around them, inviting spirits to move through the water and hear their prayers. Water has no inherent identity; it reflects the intentions and actions of the prayers being moved through it.
In Alexis’ opening poem, “Watershed,” readers are introduced to the book's central dynamics between the speaker and her parents:
I arrive at my father’s feet a dying
mapou tree. He covers his eyes with
mud while goats feast on my fallen hair.
I hear my mother call for the Lord
to send just enough rain for our lungs
& her carnations to see a new season.
The speaker arrives at her father’s feet, insinuating subservience to this patriarch. She is “a dying mapou tree,” which are trees known for their ability to thrive anywhere, their branches tending to bend rather than break. In other words, despite the speaker's resiliency, she is dying, which the father does not wish to see. He not only covers his eyes but harms himself by using mud to do so. “Fallen hair” builds on the “dying” of the opening line, as the speaker doesn’t have energy to defend themselves as their body is feasted on by goats. As we move to the mother, the verb “hear” implies that she is far away. It also showcases a difference in action between the parents. Where the father ignores his daughter, the mother prays for “rain for our lungs / & her carnations.” Yet, this prayer is questionable as the mother prays for her family and her flowers equally, diluting the prayer for her daughter. The phrases “just enough” and “new season” further put this prayer in question as the daughter is in immediate need of care and yet this prayer does the bare minimum, focusing on the future, not the present. Formally, the tercets speak to the ways these three characters are intertwined, and Alexis’ sharp line breaks show us their divisions.
Split into seven sections, this collection anchors itself in six opening poems all titled “Prayer to Èzili Dantò” labeled I through VI. Èzili Dantò is an Iwa, a spirit in Haitian Vodou often represented as the hardworking, exhausted, and at times angry mother who personifies womanhood, love, and protection. Alexis opens the second section with “Prayer to Èzili Dantò I:”
He cut my tongue from its home
& left two roosters at war. Rain
betrays earth when it refuses
to join hands. Orphaned stories
still sit in my skin…
I
remember the names of every man
who filled my blood with grenades…
I lay in my own blood & remember
them enough to write them all dead.
The “he” here is a man of many names, the speaker’s father as well as lovers who mutilated her, putting her mouth at war with itself. Violence is written on the speaker's body, her blood is filled with grenades and orphaned stories—that is, narratives divorced from their origins, which is to say trauma stories—sit on her skin. However, the speaker is determined to “write them all dead.” The pronoun "them" is purposely vague. The speaker may be writing about her perpetrators and through doing so, annihilating the hold they have on her. Or, the speaker may be writing down her trauma stories, thus allowing the events to no longer be haunting her but, rather, be tethered to the past and thus put to rest. Here, prayer is concrete, an action grounded in the speaker’s facilities: her brain and her hand. Yet, when we arrive at “Prayer to Èzili Dantò II” ten pages later, we realize that the last two lines of the first prayer poem begin this one.
“Prayer to Èzili Dantò II” is a reversal of the assurance of “Prayer to Èzili Dantò I.” The speaker that was ready to “write them all dead” is suddenly made “a mango trail…instead of [a] bruising,” “given powers [she] never asked for,” and falling again & again “in what [she] think[s] is home.” Violence transforms the speaker; the power she had in the first prayer is now a power she never asked for. The home she made of her blood and bruising is not a true home. The speaker realizes she is echoing the violence done to her, not only implicating herself but the reader as we reckon with narratives of retribution that simply reproduce violence. The poem extends this implication by ending with the lines “People look at me in confusion & / say I must like being held underwater.” The double burden of domestic violence entraps the speaker, the violence inflicted by her loved ones and the violence of those who witness and blame the speaker for staying. Prayer in this poem is a heavy knowing, an acknowledgement of the past and present that feels inescapable.
All six of the prayer poems are linked by their last and first two lines, forming one long prayer built on cyclical contradictions. While one prayer dreams of “No rape, / no black eyes, no pockets or souls sucked / dry, no one to lead us away from this home,” another states, “Ma stayed. When I ask why, answers did little / to fill multiplying craters in my hands. I arrive,” as yet another asks, “do those who stay / on hurricane-prone land yearn to sleep / in a home that fails to deliver?” Prayer is no single action nor single dream but a space that holds them all, a space whose contours transform with our own histories, actions, and reactions. Just like with water, Alexis uses our preconceived notion of prayer to highlight its flexibility, its elusiveness.
Beyond the Watershed is a testament to the slow and cyclical process of survival, a transformation that consists of many transformations. Alexis documents the terrifying experience of giving yourself over to another, whether it is the violence of a lover, the dismissal of a father, or the resignation of a mother. In parallel, this is the vulnerability required in prayer and water. Both of these forces take their time, changing a person or a landscape slowly and sometimes, unpredictably. These poems force the reader to confront each harm, each escape attempt, and each failure that it takes for the speaker to “see a new season.” Yet, just as Alexis's speaker asks, “How many cups does it take to transform shame?” she answers, “surely surely there [is] something better.”
Noel Quiñones is a Puerto Rican writer, educator, and community organizer from the Bronx. He’s received fellowships from Poets House, the Poetry Foundation, CantoMundo, Tin House, and SAFTA (Sundress Academy for the Arts). His work has been published in POETRY, the Latin American Review, Kweli Journal, and is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly and Gulf Coast. He is the founder of Project X, a Bronx-based arts organization, a poetry book reviewer for Muzzle Magazine, and a current M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Mississippi. Follow him online @noelpquinones.