Gospel Night

"Waters's elegant language suggests that there is grace to be found in facing and speaking of our sorrows. . . . His use of humor creates a tension between the profane and the sublime."—Arts & Letters

Among the survivors of the Donner
Party—idiom's black sense of humor—
Who developed a secret taste for flesh
Flaked between the fluted bones of the wrist?

In his tenth poetry collection, Michael Waters tackles the dual (and dueling) natures of our humanity: sin and transgression, isolation and atrocity, love and darkness, and the desire for a language that can illuminate such ordinary yet disturbing spaces.