Elijah Fed by Ravens

In her full-length debut, Kristina Erny questions whether sustenance will come in the desert places in her faith and what it might mean to journey forward anyway. In meditations set within imagery in 1 Kings, Erny deftly borrows the voices of long-dead prophets, widows, and ravens to explore her own contemporary faith-life, becoming the angel nudging herself forward. Everyday human moments of grief, longing, desire, and doubt sit alongside celebrations of simple life. Empty boxes, kids drawings, buzzards and drives to school become laced with the Divine. They are the remaking of a world in which the smallest of things can be holy and joy comes from watching for the bread that shows up in the most bloody of beaks. The poems do not deliver answers, but practice an unfolding of new questions. They cry out: In the everyday we are resurrected and made new.