My Blog
From Haiti, with Love
From Haiti, with Love Anthology: So Spoke the Earth It took a good part of the morning on the road to reach the mountaintop where, surprisingly, stands a small Vodou temple whose front facade displays a large, vivid mural. From the cement floor beneath a portrait of...
Saint Bernadette at Night
Saint Bernadette at Night from The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti My first recollections of story books come with the scents, sounds, and textures of Caribbean nights and with images of a little girl curled in bed over white sheets covering a small cotton...
The Fall of Sanctuaries
The Fall of Sanctuaries I was a child who gazed at the sky. Each time we drove past the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Port-au-Prince, my eyes met with Christ. I never missed the chance, as we passed the church, to look up, contemplate the immense Christ who...
Migrant
Migrant To be a poet is to hurt—I came, I saw, I hurt. We stand, we vouch, we lie— the truth we want is not— tis a dream we have of life we knew in a world we lost. The cross we bear, we brought— America was brave and bold and here for us who ventured forth with ills...
Sanctuary
Sanctuary I name this Sanctuary. Enter. I want you to bare your feet— you must feel the difference in touch. A Kilim rug stretches far ahead, offered for your every step, its hard fibers impervious to what weighs, acting as emissary from the ancient grievances of...
An Estuary
An Estuary Our friends go like bark from a sycamore. They fall off the big tree to be swept with the season. Too much of their absence takes mercy out of the heart— we collect the silence left by a face that tossed its teeth, a one-eyed inquisitor, a faded rose sunk...