To call Sophia Tempest Parsons’ debut, a lamb hangs by its own foot, a “collection” of poems feels like a disservice. This chapbook is more collision than collection—a project that pulls at all corners of the poet’s history, culture, and physical / emotional geographies to create a unique body of work all its own. These poems flash like fragments of a sharp memory or the light on a knife, and so much is said by what remains unsaid. Ancient Greek deities wander the streets of Texas, of Athens, of the speaker’s own body, their masks pulled away to reveal them as they truly are—cruel, manipulative, deceitful, which is to say: also human. 

“my body is a burning house / I can’t escape” the speaker says to Ares one moment; and later, invoking Persephone, “I want / cults, mysteries, wikipedia pages / devoted to my debasement”. But this burning house contains many rooms. There is violence, death, uncertainty, yes, but also something like hope. This body, like the titular lamb awaiting the flames of Pascha, has been used, mistreated, but also has endured this long to arrive here, finally, as an offering. “I’m just an animal,” Parsons writes, “trying to claw something out.” These poems hurt, but a death is also a beginning.

— Constantine Jones, author of In Still Rooms (Operating System, 2020) & Visual AIDS Artist+ Member