Our Lady of the Ruins

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.

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?