Birthmarks: Poems
Hagar raises her son across an unwelcoming border. Bathsheba tries to erase her trauma. Another breakup haunts the woman at the well.
The poems in Birthmarks contemporize women of the Old and New Testaments and consider who they might be today. Drawing on history, subtext, and common female experiences, they reimagine these characters and their narratives, daring readers to meet the women of the Bible anew.
“Whitney Rio-Ross’s poetry emerges out of what may be the single most damaging silence in the history of Christianity: the voices of women. The songs and speeches she has teased out of those silences are complex, moving, necessary—and now unforgettable.”—Christian Wiman, poet and essayist, author of My Bright Abyss