Branson Parler

Overcoming Lamech: Lament as Antidote to Violence

In response to evil Christ-centered lament is a performative action that both acknowledges the evil and injustice present in the world and simultaneously defuses our vengeful feelings by focusing on the sacrifice of Christ.

Luci Shaw

Hate Invasion

In Luci Shaw’s “Hate Invasion,” anxieties, like crows, “clot” and “colonize” the mind and heart of the poet, who longs for divine answers to earth’s evils.

Kevin Austin, Sarah Janci Perez

Not For Sale: An Interview with Kevin Austin

Kevin Austin discusses the evil of modern-day slavery in morphing persons into things, slavery’s prevalence in our own communities, and the future hope for ending slavery through the work of modern-day abolitionists.

J.D. Smith

Sequence

In “Sequence,” J. D. Smith offers a startling contrast of nightmarish images—an animal lured for an empty sacrifice and a watery attempt to escape from one’s self.

Kali Wagner

Tillers of the Ground

In Kali Wagner’s poem, two mourning women become potters, the dirt of their sons’ graves “dusting the house” of their grief.