to the god of sore feet and bad backs by Reverie Koniecki

In Reverie Koniecki’s to the god of sore feet and bad backs, “faith is a violent waiver” for the pains brought on by destructive family members, economic injustice, systemic racism, and more. This collection is a prayer, a plea, a defiant cry of resolve. Speakers sing “an unsteady soprano of innocence,” knowing that “a lure can be mistaken for a life preserver” as they navigate landscapes punctuated by construction sites, frozen food aisles, and drugstores, which in Koniecki’s poems become sites as holy as any temple. “Blessed be the weary who are tired of waiting,” Koniecki writes; “blessed are these calloused hands / for they shall inherit the rent.” In this incisive examination of family, spirituality, and endurance in the face of all odds, she offers guidance and wisdom in soaring verse. The “future is two syllables / too heavy to carry alone,” she writes; “you deserve to exhale / without accusation.”

–Catherine Kyle

“Reverie Koniecki casts a warm, piercing eye on how the everyday is woven into the story of the world itself. In bearing witness to the whispered catastrophes of life lived in the twenty-first century, she raises those whispers to shouts, gifting them voice, volume, and veracity. Her poems grant gravity to small moments that pack a nearly unbearable density of insight and music. She is an essential poet.”

–Connor Stratman