There was a series of balloons, three, that the wind blew in. They were black balloons w/the number seven on each. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but felt they were auspicious and on the side of positivity. Then I saw three number nines and felt the same way. But, I couldn’t tell for certain what the repeating numbers meant as I wasn’t a numerologist or highly into numbers to begin with.
I saw a lady that reminded me of another lady I had once made fun of unfairly. I was immature and words had hurt the lady’s feelings but the lady either forgot or forgave me or buried it as she didn’t act as if it happened when I heard from her much later. That and one other thing were the only two things I worried about karmically. The other was that I had injured a hockey player and he was taken away in an ambulance. But it wasn’t done intentionally though several people thought it was. I hit him, which was allowed, but it the other injury was not done on purpose as he just fell on a bad angle. He turned out to be alright. I was glad for this. Those two things had happened practically another life ago as they say, yet they had bothered me. Other than those two events I felt clean, but like the numbers, it wasn’t possible from where I was standing to know for sure.
You can’t always see the spiritual ledger. It is interesting that ledger also means a demarcation stone upon a grave because perhaps it not until we have a stone ledger that we can in the life review according to the canon of such experiences, see more accurately how our actions and words really affected others and the universe.
I was low monetarily. The group in front of me was affluent and just exuded it. You can tell through intuition and life experience those who try to come off that way versus the actual. When they left they forgot a purse leather green, the same colour as the jade some of them wore. Nobody noticed and they weren’t doubling back the way some people do when they realize they forgot something. There is about a five to ten second window you have to remember something is amiss before you have officially forgotten something. They were definitely leaving. I picked up the purse and went out the same door and called them back as they were getting into what looked like a new and definitely a tricked-up-decked-out high end SUV vehicle.
‘Someone forgot their purse,’ I said, ‘holding it up.’
They came over and thanked me and took the purse. I returned it because it was the right thing to do. I went back to my seat in a booth, for booths are perhaps one of the greatest things ever created, and looked up through the adjacent window watching them leave.
At a field there were streams cutting through like a water swath. I paused and stared at them, admiring the movement of water. I thought of Herman Hesse and his book. I had two copies of the famous work, but had given away the better, newer one. My old one was tattered and torn, plus coffee got spilled on it at some point. I didn’t know what that meant either. A large woodpecker that had been alighted in a nearby tree took off and I was frustrated that I had not had my camera out. Yet, I still admired its flight and the silhouette it made against the afternoon winter sunlight.
I kept going around there. In the distance were train tracks but a train rarely as far as I could tell went by. There were large holes in the wall, the hillside, for the water to go under. It was a fine juxtaposition of water that appeared black against the snowy white sides. And then distant parts of the stream tumbled down a few feet in two places, bragging up its bits like cold clear and white flames and also many spark look a likes as if from a some giant sparkler.
I went by a bookstore, an old used bookstore that I used to patronize. Proper gems could be found there and for inexpensive prices. Books were like treasures. But the store was gone, replaced by a work-wear store. The vests and coveralls mostly beige and black, stood looking back at me from the windows. It was as if the bookstore had never existed. Though on the outskirts of town, the perimeter purlieu, it had been a wealthy town, but didn’t have a new or used bookstore. I guess the world had changed.
So I headed back home and did chores, prosaic, mundane things, sometimes glancing out the windows as I moved about. There was nothing besides a puzzle on a dining room table, an old piano, and a painting on the wall. Also a bookshelf and coffee table by the couches beyond. The hardwood floor was weathered by time but had character and was still passable. I had never been a huge fan of the neighborhood or its dwellings, but it was clean and quiet and that counts for a lot. It was better than many other places. That view to outdoors didn’t hold a lot. A fence handsome that I had stained with a brush and roller, a good privacy fence as they called it, with lattice work up top that was not too plain and not too gaudy either. Snow was on the ground. It had been a long and cold snowy winter. I hoped the earth and sky really were pregnant with spring. A shed storing summer chairs and a table. On its door, there were two Ontario license plates and two Virginia ones. The first couple were from 1973, the year and place I was born, and the second set 1972, the year and place my beloved was born. Other than that, mostly just old barren branches waited out there, stoic and alone.
One day with some luck, spring would finally start for myself and for them.
Haitian American Author Featured at the Boston Public Library’s Greater Roxbury Book Fair in Association with Savor the Square!
Ok, folks! Here are the photos from my highly anticipated (well at least by me!) Book Fair celebrating authors of color (BIPOC) and My book “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” was selected by the Boston Public Library to be featured for Haitian American Heritage Month along with Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library! I met so many talented authors, storytellers, motivational speakers, wonderfully quirky book lovers! I met the woman whose mother founded the Caribbean Carnival in Boston! And one author, who has a center named after her, will be inviting me to an academic symposium for activists and authors at Boston University! Did I forget to mention that…I SOLD OUT! But uh…hmmmm….I’m very humble about it of course…
Thank you ALL who showed Up and showed ouT! Merci beaucoup!
The Boston Public Library is featuring my (c’est moi Jacques Fleury) prose and poetry book:
“You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self””
for national Haitian American Heritage Month! I was selected among celebrity authors and books published by major publishers like HarperCollins who tout many New York Times
Best Sellers! A great honor as an indie author to be acknowledged by mainstream audiences and literary intelligentsia! Here are links below.
Hope you check out my books from the library, buy them at your local bookstores (if you’re in Massachusetts: The Grolier/Harvard Bookstore/Porter Square Books etc…) or on bookshop dot com (to support indie bookstores) or amazon or just STOP BY where I will have my own table with ALL four of my books for a book signing!
Springing from the Roxbury community’s deep connections to books and literacy, The Greater Roxbury Book Fair will spotlight 21 local and BIPOC authors and feature story time for children, panels, workshops, and local author and literary organization exhibitors, community vendors, food, music, and most of all: fun! There’s something for every reader—from kids to adults, comics readers to poetry aficionados—at the Greater Roxbury Book Fair.
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and a literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World 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.com/jacquesfleury.–
Shamsiya Khudoynazarova Turumovna (February 15, 1973) was born in Uzbekistan. Studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Tashkent State University (1992-1998). She took first place in the competition of young republican poets (1999). Four collections of poems have been published in Uzbekistan: “Leaf of the Heart” (1998), “Roads to You” (1998), “The Sky in My Chest” (2007), “Lovely Melodies” (2013). She wrote poetry in more than ten genres. She translated some Russian and Turkish poets into Uzbek, as well as a book by YunusEmro. She lived as a political immigrant with her family for five years in Turkey.
liquid memory that mixes with the folds of written time.
It is not a word, it is a trace,
it is not a form, it is tension,
the sign unravels and recomposes
in the time that flows beyond syntax,
beyond ordinary perception,
where ink lives like blood,
where meaning twists and expands.
You dye in someone else’s inkwell
as in your own blood,
let the word expand,
let the border dissolve,
because language does not exist in solitude,
but vibrates in the flesh of those who welcome it.
Lidia Popa was born in Romania in the locality of Piatra Șoimului, in the county of Neamț, on 16th April, 1964. She finished her studies in Piatra Neamț, Romania with a high school diploma and other administrative courses, where she worked until she decided to emigrate to Italy.
She has been living for 23 years and worked in Rome as part of the wave of intellectual emigrants since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She wrote her first poem at her age of seven. She is a poet, essayist, storyteller, recognized in Italy and in other countries for her literary activities. She collaborates with cultural associations, literary cenacles, literary magazines and paper and online publications of Romanian, Italian and international literature. She writes in Romanian, Italian and also in other languages as an exercise in knowledge.
BOOKS
She has published her poems in six books:
in Italy:
1. ” Point different ( to be ) ” – ed. Italian and
2.” In the den of my thoughts ( Dacia ) ” – ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian AlettiEditore 2016,
4. ” The soul of words” ed. bilingual Romanian/ Albanian Amanda Edit Verlag 2021,
5.” Syntagms with longing for clover ” ed. Romanian, EdituraMinela 2021.
6.” The Voice interior ” LidiaPopa and BakiYmeri ed. bilingual Romanian/Italian, Amanda Edit Verlag 2022.
Her poems featured in more than 50 literary anthologies and literary magazines on line from 2014 to 2023 in Italy, Romania, Spain, Canada, Serbia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Liban,USA,etc.
Her poems are translated into Italian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic, German, Bangladesh, Portuguese, Serbian, Urdu, Dari, Tamil, etc.
Her writings are published regularly with some magazines in Romania, Italy and abroad.
She is a promoter of Romanian, Italian and international literature, and is part of the juries of the competitions.
She translates from classical or contemporary authors who strike for the refinement and quality of their verses in the languages: Italian, Romanian, English, Spanish, French, German, stating that “it is just a writing exercise to learn and evolve as a person with love for humanity, for art, poetry and literature “.
SHE IS
*Member of the Italian Federation of Writers (FUIS)
*Honorary member of the International Literary Society Casa PoeticaMagia y Plumas Republic of Colombia,
*Member of Hispanomundial Union of Writers (Union Hispanomundial de Escritores) (UHE) and Thousands Minds For Mexico (MMMEX)
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*She had come power of attorney Vice-president UHE Romania, Mars18, 2021- August 21, 2021
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*Counselor from Italy for Suryodaya Literary Foundation Odisha India,
*Director from Italy for Alìanza Cultural Universal (ACU) Argentina
*Member Motivational Strips Oman,a member of numerous other literary groups at the level internationally,
*Director of Poetry and Literature World Vision Board of Directors (PLWV) Bangladesh
*Membership of ANGEENA INTERNATIONAL NON PROFIT ORGANISATION of Canada
International Peace Ambassador of The Daily Global Nation International Independent Newspaper from Dhaka Bangladesh – 2023
*Founder literary group Lido dell’anima with LIDO DELL’ANIMA AWARDS
*Founder LIDO DELL’ANIMA Italian magazine
*Founder SILVAE VERBORUM INTERNATIONAL multilingual magazine
The water, once a crystalline mirror reflecting the infinite blue,
has become a distorted reflection,
a broken mirror showing a sick,
contaminated face, full of chemical scars.
The forests, once majestic,
stand like naked skeletons,
their dry branches whispering a silent agony,
a lament for lost life.
The cities, giants of concrete and steel,
have been transformed into oppressive cages,
imprisoning life in their labyrinth of asphalt,
suffocating the breath of nature.
A dull echo, a stifled cry,
rises from the earth,
a deep lament that barely reaches our ears,
deafened by the noise of industry,
by the constant hum of technology.
Seeds of destruction, sown with indifference,
with greed, spread with the wind,
reaping a toxic future, a future where life withers,
where beauty fades.
Time, inexorable, flows like a slowly emptying hourglass,
watching us with an impassive gaze,
a silent witness to our destruction.
But in the deepest darkness, a spark of hope persists.
A green shoot, timid and fragile,
pushes its way through the cracks in the asphalt,
defying the gray monotony.
A solitary flower, a resilient tree,
a sign of life that resists death.
A faint but firm echo whispers in the wind,
an echo of hope that rises above lament,
a song to the possibility of regeneration,
a call to action, to responsibility, to transformation.
Nature, wounded but not defeated,
extends a hand to us, a last chance.
The future is not yet written…
GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.
