Anne spoke to Jack before his hanging. He had requested her visit, expecting perhaps some farewell filled with grief.
Instead, there she was, saying: I am sorry to see you here, Jack, but if you had fought like a man, you needn’t hang like a dog.
Saying: Hand over your bullets of silence; walk a plank paved with my words—
Saying: I now have the language to hate you in the act of returning, and I give it to you as you have given it to me.
•••
Sonia Farmer is the founder of Poinciana Paper Press which publishes limited-edition, hand-bound and letterpress-printed chapbooks by Caribbean writers out of Nassau, The Bahamas. She’s the author of two chapbooks whose work has appeared in numerous journals including Poui and The Caribbean Writer. She recently won the 2011 Small Axe Competition in poetry. She holds a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute.
tongues of the ocean 