Grasp This Salt

Grasp This Salt is a collection of poetry that seeks to explore what it means to be a mother and the complexities of trying to understand our own mother's experience of mothering us, while following the life and trial of Susan Smith, convicted in 1995 for the murder of her two young sons.

Nestled inside the sins of a woman who would kill her own children is the voice of a young mother grieving multiple miscarriages while her toddler named Erin keeps playing at drowning. The young mother is haunted by Smith's crime as it's recounted by a flock of lake birds, Medea of Greek mythology, and the imagined black man Smith claimed kidnapped her children before she was found guilty. Grasp This Salt brings to light with startling urgency what it means to love another, to grieve violent death, and to bear a lifetime of guilt.