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Xavier Stone
Anansi’s Passage
“What I have done what suffered with what pain
Voyaged th’ unreal, vast, unbounded deep.”
Paradise Lost. Book X. Lines 470-471
They bought me. Brought me through barracoon
and brackish waters. My believers whispered webs
of prayer in the darkened day. I breathed in the salt
of the abysmal ocean. I watched my beloved ones drown
in the forsaken sea. I hummed my drumming songs
as the pale ones marched us in rhythms
gone wrong over the wet planks of wood
that drank our cries at night.
About the writer:
Xavier Stone received his M.A. in English from Missouri State University in 2013 and went on to earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Media Arts from University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he took several courses with Guggenheim winner Dr. Michelle Boisseau as a Durwood fellow. Stone has published poems, as well as academic essays. He was a panelist at AWP in 2015.
Image: Slave Ship by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1841). Oil on canvas. 35.7 x 48.2 inches. 1840. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporationsupporting writers and artists worldwide.
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