Prose

… One hears that men from Jeremie have pretensions to a kind of inspired singularity; they often succeed at it. It is one of those who, in the evening, at an Auberge Inn table, told me what he knew of Gustave’s death, and this man, himself looking like a great grasshopper of a man wearing full clothes, and seen to fold his long, dry limbs over a din-maker of a motorcycle which he hangs onto like some insects do onto their wings;

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 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...

Marie-Ange's Ginen from The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti My name is Marie-Ange Saint-Jacques and I got on that boat November third with my heart open and my eyes closed. My mother, Venante Saint-Jacques, also got on the boat. She too did this with an open...

The Chapel from The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti. I am a chapel. A simple white pentagon of roughcast cement blocks aired through two wooden doors and cedar shutters. The past haunts and decorates me. The present crosses me from one door to the other like...