An Exodus of Sparks

An Exodus of Sparks explores how violence reshapes family, geography, and faith. Predominantly set in the high desert, these poems explore the micro-losses of a father and brother (to downwinder-related cancer and substance abuse) against the macro-losses of a geography to nuclear testing and a tradition of faith to the ravages of grief. Liberally appropriating Judaic symbolism and wedding it to an inherited Mormon vocabulary and iconography, the poet/speaker wrests her power from her cultu...