Priest opens herself to her readers like a surgeon, driving heartache and heartbreak home as though her poems were scrawled by a pen clenched in an angry fist. Slaughter the One Bird is brave, beautiful, irreverent, and incredibly relevant, its narrator travailing a landscape of domesticity gone sour, the scars of childhood, and all the secrets that make us who we are.
Holly Day, author of In This Place, She is Her Own
Purchase my debut full-length collection of poetry, Slaughter the One Bird, from Sundress Publications at the $9.99 pre-order price for a limited time.
"Priest’s poems do the hard work of expanding the language for exploring the experience of abuse and trauma, which means they expand our understanding of (in)humanity. These poems are never predictable. They are like flashes of light in shadowed rooms—dark rooms—with bright, illuminating flashes."
Sue William Silverman, author of If the Girl Never Learns
Slaugher the One Bird will be published with Sundress Publications this summer. Covering the compound traumas of childhood sexual assault and domestic violence in adulthood, these poems follow a woman's journey as she explores the system that binds her being and consumes her conscious. Mother, spouse, daughter--no part of her existence is untouched, examined, and accused. Listen to "Record of Wrongs."