Emily Rose Proctor is a Presbyterian pastor and poet who currently serves as the director of programs and outreach at a food pantry and homeless outreach center in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where she lives with her husband and two young children. Her work has recently appeared in the Christian Century and Panoplyzine and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize.
We blamed ourselves, of course, the other eleven. Wasn’t it our fault? Matthew should have been the keeper of the purse, but no one liked Matthew, so they made Judas do it because he was the new guy. And soon no one liked him either. We never seemed to have enough money, and who else […]
The first death was a hawk dive— a fever dream. The second is biding its time like a retired general fishing. This time I am wide awake. I hear the chief priests have hired someone. I know I should be more grateful. But when the stench finally cleared and my eyes could bear the searing […]
No cheery buzz to announce her— smaller, swifter than her equine cousin, more determined than the mosquito to force us all indoors for the last few weeks before the unbearable summer swelter begins. Praise to the yellow fly, like us—lover of shade and water, forest and bay, equal opportunity spreader of misery, her bloodlust a […]
In those first days, when I discovered my lips, my tongue, my teeth, and what they could do, I named the other creatures without rhyme or reason, named them first just to hear myself speak, then to hear the different sounds out loud: the click and smack, the hiss and oh—but how could I possibly remember […]
