Bloodmercy
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
Philadelphia : The American Poetry Review, [2025]
Physical Description
vi, 77 pages ; 23 cm
Summary
Chosen by Nicole Sealey as the winner of the 2025 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Bloodmercy reimagines Cain and Abel as sisters. Blurring the space between the Old Testament and the modern world, the girls gaze heavenward with their enduring questions to God. -- Publisher website.
"Jones takes on he idea of grace, at whose feet we kneel and at whose side we wish to heel, and does so with lyric intensity and precision"--
Contents
- After the offering ritual, Cain carries Abel home
- I. Cain
- Hands of the field
- Juice or milk
- Sister's keeper
- Vanity
- Just the four of us
- Daddy's girl
- Patience in the bramble
- Cain in the peopleless kingdom
- Contempt towards Eden
- Bloodmercy
- We are soft between hours
- II. Abel
- Epithalamion in the field
- A brief history of the world according to goats
- Feast
- Psalm of acquiescence
- Between grace and mercy
- First sighting
- Nocturne
- Kitchen work
- Twice as many stars as usual
- III. First drought
- Sister's dress
- Psalm for the fast girls
- Fawn
- But never the same love twice
- Field notes in the final days of girlhood
- Mark of Cain
- Husbandchild: etymology of Cain
- Psalm of the morning twerk
- It's vast enough to pretend
- David
- Self-portrait as the blk girl becoming the beast everyone thought she was
- A lot of blood, but not much mercy
- The terrible feast of love: etymology of Abel
- To will it
- Of
- IV. Eve
- Eve onto Lilith
- Angel's trumpet
- Land of Nod as Nigeria
- V. Bloodmercy.