I feel woefully underqualified to analyze and review poetry, but I will say I liked this short collection a lot. I want to dust off my Bible and do a re-read with the verses open alongside Austin’s poems. 

In general I feel like the longer poems were much stronger because there was more space to develop her ideas further and build upon the really beautiful imagery and themes present throughout. I would’ve loved more of those longer poems because I think they tended to be the strongest ones. The shorter poems that were the length of a verse or two didn’t really bother me because I think, oftentimes, Christians often boil things down to verses taken out of context and construct entire narratives based off one-liners so taking short verses and subverting them worked for me. I think the shorter verses also work really well when you just sit and read the whole collection in one sitting because you get the repetition of certain phrases and ideas where she’s altering the original verse but also building upon previous alterations within her own writing, specifically with the Matthew 25 poems. 

Standouts to me were Song of Shulamit, Words of Consecration, and Romans 1:26-27. I appreciated the humor and sweetness of this collection and I would recommend it to any ex-religious or queer folks.