"This world had lost its human quality, had become a world of iron, and therefore uninhabitable."
~Antione de Saint-Exupéry
I move between rustling thinrusted iron—
a blast furnace bereft of its fire world,
only the ghosts to hold what is human
in this place that swallowed human
life the way a frog gulps flies. All iron,
sweat, and bonecrush, an uninhabitable world
pressing down the air. How can we revive a world
welded to destruction? What in the human
genome cries, extinguish, scribes it with an iron
quill, this iron prophecy of an inhumane world.
Nadine Ellsworth-Moran lives in Georgia where she works in full-time ministry while pursuing her love of writing. She is fascinated by the stories unfolding all around her and seeks to bring everyone into conversation around a common table. Her essays and poems have appeared in Interpretation, Structo, Thimble, Sonic Boom, Emrys, Kakalak, and Saint Katherine Review, among others. She hopes to continue listening closely and writing about the shared experience of life in these times, with particular interest in the joys and struggles of coming to understand the history, identity, faith, and culture of the modern South.