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 say we’re from France—remind them that you were born in Montréal 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, nah, the statement does not capture what we revolutionaries have been through; it does not get to the heart of La liberté ou la mort!—Live Free or Die. We require in fact for our declaration of independence: the skin of a white man for parchment his skull for an inkwell his blood for ink and a bayonet for a pen General Dessalines: *chef’s kiss* i entrust you to convey my sentiments regarding the above