grafyé rasin-an
dwèt ou blé épi an san
twou-a pa ni fen
manman
Blan/Lò
Gadé mwen,
all decked out in white and gold like
I’m the second coming.
dripping venom instead of holy water.
wouldn’t mind the suburbs, if not
for the new age bros and vapid white feminists,
who have the gall to assume they’re part of the solution.
ki sa pwòblenm mwen?
thought you could talk down to me in perpetuity,
‘til I obliterated your ego with my doc marten boot.
we were never really friends, just friendly.
can’t feign austerity for your comfort any longer.
shower me in your hyperbolic platitudes,
wild, brash, dehumanizing for drawing boundaries – I’ll embrace it.
rather that than live sad, frigid, and fraught with fear.
Anvéwité
They taught us that the natives were all dead,
That indigenous islanders were long extinct.
Wiped out by European diseases, lack of weapons, poor luck.
But we know our ancestors, we know our histories.
They insisted that our minds were inferior,
Yet the “great nations” of the world were each built on our forced labor,
And when we claimed our freedom for ourselves, we became doctors, lawyers, architects, writers.
They claimed Kwéyòl wasn’t as good as French,
Et anvéwité, they were right about that at least – it’s richer, much more complex.
It’s the rough colonizer tongue, blanketed in the pure beauty of African and Carib languages. A shining example of our diverse heritage.
They’ll try to teach you false narratives about yourself, about the world,
Whether they intend to or not.
To survive this indignity, stand firm in your reality,
And stay one step ahead.
Hayden Winston 
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