Poetry by Rachel Custer

       Rich Carstensen CC




Going to Hell in a Handbasket


Listen: there is beauty
in the end of a thing -

the crescendoed trill of a final note  

in the same way one cricket 
lost inside a house

blooms in us a mission to end a song

but a thousand crickets 
chorus us to sleep   

what do we know of holiness 
but each other?         

God is a crooked forefinger 
lifting our chins

us (too often) fighting 
to turn our heads




Rachel Custer is the author of Flatback Sally Country (Terrapin Books, forthcoming 2023). The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). An NEA arts fellow (poetry, 2019), she has previously published poetry, personal essays, and flash fiction in many literary journals. She lives in Indiana, and her work is constantly informed by and wrestles with the values and struggles of the rural Rust Belt. Her Christian faith is vital to her understanding of the world and her art.