the anonym gospels

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Em J Parsley's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the anonym gospels</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> explores faith-and the longing for faith after the loss of it-through the lens of a queer Appalachian gospel in the Greek sense of the word: good news. Told in four parts each gospel takes us through a transition point that we as readers bear witness to: from dogma to questioning from questioning to fear from fear to resolution and what comes after this reckoning: the apocryphal gospel. The good news that these poems have to offer is bittersweet: we must confront the painfully stark realities of loving a place and people that often try to deny our existence but there is tenderness and care to be found (and created) in that landscape. Parsley interrogates constructed binaries of legitimacy-hetero vs. queer canonical vs. apocryphal-and ultimately asks us to join them on the illegitimate side of that binary. </span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>