summer farah
@summ.bsky.social
author of I COULD DIE TODAY & LIVE AGAIN (Game Over Books) + THE HUNGERING YEARS (Host Publications) 💜| 🇵🇸 summerfarah.com
here's the poem where the book gets its title, published in @prairie-schooner.bsky.social FUSION issue, curated by @lenakt.bsky.social 💜
November 9, 2025 at 5:20 PM
it's so perfect I'm so grateful to my designer/publisher Annar 😭😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
November 5, 2025 at 8:41 PM
it's so perfect I'm so grateful to my designer/publisher Annar 😭😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
was also really touched + impressed by the thoughtful way with which she developed each speaker, so beautifully distinct but clearly in conversation with each other, too [in response to what "bloodmercy" means]
![Blood, obviously, has multiple meanings to it, too, right? It means kinship; it can also mean history. When I think about the biblical implication of [blood], after Cain kills his brother, God says, your brother’s blood wails to me from the ground. Blood also means connection, and it means bond, but it is also a language on its own. What does it mean to always be bound to another person? Even families who maybe break contact still carry pieces of each other with them. No matter how much you might be in disharmony with your family, you are still of them, you know? Bloodmercy. In the book, it’s very clear that the sisters have a borderline codependent relationship. When I was thinking about how to differentiate the voices of Cain, Eve, and Abel, I was thinking about the three modes of poetry. Lyrical. Abel is narrative. Eve is dramatic. If we’re writing this same poem from Cain’s perspective, she’s gonna be rapping a little bit. If we’re writing this poem from Abel’s perspective, she has a lot to say, especially because, canonically, Abel does not have a voice in the original fable. I wanted a single word that evoked the suffocating nature of family. My enduring questions to God.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fecv2uyyiixveringqvxrtbj/bafkreicveu55kja6sbtlewkh4w5335z4kbuhbd3js73h2x653kyxq4ctva@jpeg)
November 4, 2025 at 4:12 PM
was also really touched + impressed by the thoughtful way with which she developed each speaker, so beautifully distinct but clearly in conversation with each other, too [in response to what "bloodmercy" means]
got cut from the conversation, but she brought up this poem as we talked about where her investment in the grotesque comes from, which I found incredibly effective "Little / Master of earth, no one gets to heaven /
Without going through you first." poems.com/poem/ode-to-...
Without going through you first." poems.com/poem/ode-to-...
Ode to the Maggot
Brother of the blowfly
& godhead, you work magic
Over battlefields,
In slabs of bad pork
& flophouses. Yes, you
Go to the root of all things.
poems.com
November 4, 2025 at 4:10 PM
got cut from the conversation, but she brought up this poem as we talked about where her investment in the grotesque comes from, which I found incredibly effective "Little / Master of earth, no one gets to heaven /
Without going through you first." poems.com/poem/ode-to-...
Without going through you first." poems.com/poem/ode-to-...