Nickole Brown

Nickole Brown's "To Those Who Were Our First Gods" speaks through colloquial, even childlike voices desperately listening for the animal others to speak their pleas for "Mercy." Even as she does so, we hear the fatalism of her deep humanity (animality?) in the examples she gives of our wasteful and callous misuse of our brothers and sisters in life. She still has enough faith (anger) to demand hope:

Hope, you know by now,
is not a thing you feel
but something you do...

She mourns the passing of show more each individual animal life as she "close[s] the extinguished/horizons of his eyes." If only these fellow creatures could speak a word "mercy" we might hear and still our ravening hands. Read and care. show less

Didn't speak to me. Couldn't tell if the poems were autobiographical or fiction, and that bothered me more than I would've expected -- either way, I think I need more elegant turns of phrase in my free verse.