Prayer for Relief

With her debut poetry collection, Prayer for Relief, Krystle May Statler introduces us to an interplay of form and language to unravel what is otherwise shapeless. Drawing from her experience in the aftermath of her older brother, BJ’s, murder by the Inglewood Police Department in 2019, the poems act as tentacles reaching out and attempting to make sense of the nonsensical. Statler asks the reader to bear witness, to consider a body after it is no longer a body, to survive alongside her in this now brotherless life.