Parasite Kingdom

Poetry. Winner of the Tenth Gate Prize, 2018. In these poems Brad Richard creates a mythos that at first appears to be a warning about where our world is headed, yet reveals itself as a dirge for a way of being that we've not yet realized is gone. Richard's poems construct underground caverns where poetry moves dangerously. This collection is the accretion of decades of reading, thinking, and writing, borne out of long gestation.

“A cart rattles into the palace courtyard and explodes. A doom...