Currently, I am working on a collection of poems about living in the South, rooted in Tennessee and later, in Alabama. In words given to me by a Disquiet judge, I aim to “paint the pastoral in mud and blood.” The speaker envisions a landscape of rebirth, where a calf from childhood becomes a shadow self: an unbiblical resurrection, a kind incarnation. Core to this collection is the idea of mothers and mothering, learning to forgive, act, remember, reclaim, and mourn. Theoretically, my collection grounds itself in Kristeva’s theory of the abject, Lacanian Mirror Stage, queer theory, and necropastoralism. Politically, my work is concerned with the collapse of white evangelicalism and conservative political ideologies into Christian Nationalism. I relish contradictions in my poems, with the knowledge that our most deeply cherished communities and ideals can both harm and heal us. It is important to me to create place-based work, giving voice to the people I come from and creating space for understanding between us.