Mary Gilliland is the author of The Devil's Fools, winner of the Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
The riveting poems of Ember Days begin with ritual and end with prayer as they tunnel through Wednesday's jammed boulevards, Friday's cash worthless, Saturday's prodigal feet. Plant disease incurable as colonialism inhabits nature's solace; funds for libraries disappear, abandoned houses compel secrets. Woolf's pen runs dry, Tesla holes up, Lincoln emerges in yet another bardo. Soldiers in Baghdad, models transformed to artists, descendants of forced immigrants, survivors of hurricanes, witnesses for peace--these and other intercessory voices step up to our world's disasters, level with its possibilities, interrogate faith, justice, militarism, madness, and the perception and affection of intimate relationships.

Poems that step up to our world's disasters, level with its possibilities, and interrogate faith, justice, militarism, madness, and the joy of intimate relationships.

The riveting poems of Ember Days begin with ritual and end with prayer as they tunnel through Wednesday's jammed boulevards, Friday's cash worthless, Saturday's prodigal feet. Plant disease incurable as colonialism inhabits nature's solace; funds for libraries disappear, abandoned houses compel secrets. Woolf's pen runs dry, Tesla holes up, Lincoln emerges in yet another bardo. Soldiers in Baghdad, models transformed to artists, descendants of forced immigrants, survivors of hurricanes, witnesses for peace-these and other intercessory voices step up to our world's disasters, level with its possibilities, interrogate faith, justice, militarism, madness, and the perception and affection of intimate relationships.