Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian American Poet, Theater Reviewer, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student through Harvard University. His latest publication You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self and other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, Wyoming University, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc… He has been published in publications such as Spirit of Change Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World and Cooch Behar Magazine anthologies out of India, Poets Reading the News, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.
Tell Me about Haiti
by Jacques Fleury
Oooh, this is my opportunity
To get off my chest
what I’ve waiting
To get off my chest
For nearly half a century
I've been here since I was practically a baby
Yet you still want ME to tell you about Haiti!?!
Well, let me see...just bear with me…
I’ve written many books in part
Celebrating the resilient heart of Haiti,
Whose people continue to thrive in spite of
Domestic and natural adversity
And imposed retaliatory international foreign policy
For being the FIRST black republic and the first to abolish slavery!
Yet still you forgo reading any of my books
And entreaty for your very own private oral history,
This speaks to the privileged entitlement sentiments
Of some members of the majority in this country
And to add insult to injury,
you want to tell me all about the media debris
That you see about Haiti on TV;
Debasing the country that paid for America’s freedom
In its revolutionary battle with its blood and with its money
Having been once the richest new world island colony
Before it was depleted of its resources by
Empire hungry European colonial gluttony
Rather than being concerned with
What went on and what is going on in Haiti,
Aren't you the least bit concerned about
Yet still half a million Americans are homeless and experiencing poverty?
Aren't you the least bit concerned that even in the twenty first century,
A black man was casually lynched on national TV for all to see?
Aren’t you the least bit concerned that
In a supposed free democracy,
That your civil rights are being stripped away
At the discretion of a capricious politician’s whimsy?
Aren't you the least bit concerned that
Even in the twenty first century,
We are still experiencing systemic
Yet still you still want to know about Haiti?!
Wouldn't it better serve you to be concerned with
The woes and sorrows of your own country?
Clean up your own backyard first
Before peeking over your neighbor’s wall
To satisfy your intrusive thirst…
The Haitian People Were Stifled by the Eiffel
by Jacques Fleury
Be careful when you look up to this Eiffel
What you may not know is
That is was built on the backs of the Negro
What you may not know is
That after enslaved Afro Haitian people
Defeated France's Napoleon Bonaparte in the
Rarely repeated tale of the Haitian Revolution
As the remedy to the culture of colonial slavery
Haiti was bullied by America and France
And forced to pay one hundred and fifty million dollars
In reparations to those whose aim were their destruction
And THAT money was in part used in the construction
Of the Eiffel Tower of European Colonial OPPRESSION!
![Chain Letter to America: the One Thing You Can Do to End Racism: A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism by [Jacques Fleury]](https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYsHAaJ8RCdYWXMnak1ryo6U9ud-WGDyrsKnaaMMX3OnHzXcUG1q8QFjevLf2HvCpMN4m4iorZ5fqDoU11irQfhzJbiA-fiHwS2lC8de6eGow=s0-d-e1-ft#https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51h0D1hRpGL._SY346_.jpg)
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