After Forgiveness

Bottlecap Press | November 2024

Available for purchase here.

Your ex is a bird. A turtle. Half-priced at PetSmart. Your houseplants are hoarding knowledge and sending mixed signals. Desire is a ghost in your home, and the rooms are bare, and the window open, and always, you see a deer out of the corner of your eye.

After Forgiveness is a testament to all that love takes and leaves behind. Journeying between past and present, obsession and spite, Powell’s poems meld dream with reality in an attempt to imagine an after. A mother heals from cancer. The drug use slows, and then stops altogether. But when it is all over, where do we put our toes, tongue, teeth? The anger that, by now, has turned to blame? What do we do with the love that lingers, pulsing, in an empty room? These poems turn to the spiritual world, to plants, to prayer, demanding answers.