Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems

TRACI BRIMHALL

 

Winner of the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, Our Lady of the Ruins tracks a group of women through their pilgrimage in a mid-apocalyptic world. Exploring war, plagues, and the search for a new God in exile, these poems create a chorus of wanderers haunted by empire, God, and personal trauma. Brimhall is currently the Summer Poet in Residence at the University of Mississippi. 

from Hysteria: A Requiem

Now, in the last world, we bury nightingales     beneath the floor.     Trackers with their ears to the ground listen for angels approaching. Where is the saint,              mortally torn and wearing a hood of stars, bearing her own redemption?