My mother taught me to
raise the dead regularly,
gave me a gospel of salt and
blood, calloused hands and
strange fire.
Her prayers over me smell of tobacco
and sound like indicatives:
“Thou shalt not confess to nice boys
with serpent tongues and eager
hands.
Thou shalt not find yourself
on your knees again.”
Carson Cawthon is a human first and a writer second. She has been published in The Ivy Leaves Journal For Literature and Art, where she was selected as a featured poet, as well as The Opal Literary Magazine. She has previously worked with both the C.S. Lewis Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, discussing the way Christians should interact in the public sphere. She lives in South Carolina.
