Mannequin Monday – Ocean, You Owe Me a Body

Welcome to another week of Mannequin Monday. The place where we drape the naked form with words, images, shapes, texture. The magic of story.

Today, the featured story starts where sea meets land. We drape the form with wet sand, with overpowering sea water, with “landlocked grief.” The story is Across the Sea: A Sequence, by Gbenga Adesina.

My own writing sample today is titled “Cold Pizza”. A man waits at the beach for a woman. For a fresh start.

This Week’s Story

Nigerian writer Gbenga Adesina brings us a poem, a story of the sea. Adesina is second-place winner in Narrative Magazine’s eleventh annual poetry contest.

The sea as a place where life meets death. Where dreams meet reality. His piece is titled: Across the Sea: A Sequence. You can read all of it in Narrative Magazine’s website.

In Adesina’s poetic story I see immigrants. Struggling to escape to a new life. Fighting the sea. Perhaps fighting a sea they have never seen or dealt with before. Landlocked people driven from their homelands. Crowded on barely-seaworthy boats to cross to a land with opportunity. With hope. Hope now drowning in sea water.

Here is a quote from Adesina’s Across the Sea:

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