Poet's Statement: When I was living in Austin, TX, I rode the bus with a guy who had a tattoo of the word “BLIND” inside of an ichthys—a Christian symbol whose name derives from the ancient Greek word for fish. My mind aswirl with Ancient Greek and Christian traditions, I adopted the persona of this would-be roofer with an overblown sense of personal tragedy and made his monologue a highly ironized, darkly humorous, and self-indulgent performance that escalates everyday woes to cataclysm and makes utter ruin appeal: sometimes we don’t want to be saved; sometimes we’d rather lean into defeat.

Bio: Laura Dixon has an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, where she also served as Associate Editor of Bat City Review. Her work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Notre Dame Review, DMQ Review, The Cortland Review, RHINO, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives outside Chicago and teaches high school English and creative writing.