From eat salt | gaze at the ocean by Junie Désil. Published by Talonbooks in 2020.
my childhood bombarded with black-and-white images of “the poorest
nation in the western hemisphere” i learn this bit of history from my
parents long after they tell me to lie about where we are from or bend the
truth a little
long before i came to know it as the place broken in two Tiohtià:ke
long before i learn that the “pearl of the Antilles” the mountainous island
we’re from is Ayiti-Kiskeya-Bohio.
this is what i learn—that on the eve of the new year, dissatisfied with
his secretary’s initial draft of the Haitian Declaration of Independence,
Boisrond-Tonnerre says,
La liberté
ou la mort!—
Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka on the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) and raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, the Capilano Review and CV2. She lives on qiqéyt (Qayqayt) Territory (New Westminster, BC).
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