PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Lois Marie Harrod

Lois Marie Harrod
USA

Lois Marie Harrod’s 13^th and 14th collections Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth were just published. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest. Brief Term, teaching poems, was published in 2011. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.

Mississippi
the most religious state, Gallup Polls, 2013

The most religious state

is always the one you’re in

surrounded by those family members

with their high profile beliefs, you know

what I mean, Salmon’s head of Christ

looking like no Arab you’ve ever seen

hanging above the fireplace and that diamond

cross pendant stuck in Aunt Lu’s cleavage,

the fervent grace before the bloody steak.

As for Durer’s praying hands,

when’s the last time you did your nails?

You know what’s obscene: your cousin Miss Pru

asking the preacher to give a polished hell

and brimstone sermon at the funeral

for that husband of hers who forgot

everything because all the relatives

would be there and not one had been saved.

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