The poem is told in words and pictures. The watercolors act as visual stanzas in communion with the text. On December 2, 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown stood on a scaffold in Virginia, awaiting the drop of the gallows floor. A month and a half earlier, with the aim of instigating an insurrection that would forever eradicate the Slave Power, he had taken over the federal armory in Harpers Ferry along with a mixed-race group of radical abolitionists. For this he had been sentenced to hang. Brown stood for a full ten minutes with the hood over his head and the noose around his neck. He waited patiently as the military gathered in formation to witness his execution. He had already issued this final statement: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” This work imagines what was envisioned in that ten minutes beneath the hood before his hanging. The vision stretches from the deep past to the present day.

ISBN 978-1-257-76548-5

84Pages

Print Book: US Trade (6 x 9 in / 152 x 229 mm), Premium Color, 80# White — Coated, Paperback Perfect Bound, Matte Cover