In his second full-length poetry collection, Christopher McCurry immerses the reader into the world of God Boy and his struggles and complicated relationships with engaging and well-crafted poems that cannot leave us indifferent to the character's evolution. What Others Say About The Gospel of God Boy
In this achingly honest collection, McCurry holds up the first question humans dared ask God as a mirror until God and man, stone and embrace, story and truth resist borders. The Gospel of God Boy haunts the reader, holding them before that mirror until their boundaries, too, begin to falter. McCurry handles the harsh reality of the human experience with such careful keeping that even his rawest, most visceral moments feel soft, vulnerable, in need of protection.
—Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., author of Gay Poems for Red States
Christopher McCurry's The Gospel of God Boy is poetry for contemporary America. The poems use the genre designations Christian scriptures—Gospel, Apocrypha, Revelation, Parable, Prophecy—and the mythic structures of brother stories (Cain and Abel, the older brother and the younger brother) to tell domestic and mundane stories about what we owe each other and how we fail one another. Despite their constant nod to theological and religious narrative structures, the language is sparse, common, antitheological, and antipoetic, except to the extent that it is tied to the world of the bodily senses. At their heart, underneath the irony and absurdist humor, lies a deep and tender empathy, lies a heart broken by the pain of the world.
—Jeremy Paden
The poems in Christopher McCurry's The Gospel of God Boy are stunning and I mean that literally. There's so much power in the images, the lines, the poems, yet it's a tender strength, a velvet-gloved fist delivering knockout after knockout—such a riveting narrative from beginning to end.
—Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math
The poems in The Gospel of God Boy build a gripping biomythography, a term Audre Lorde used in combining history, biography, and myth to build a personal story from many sources. McCurry's mesmerizing story-poems feature heart-rending language—both biblical and colloquial—and challenge readers to unearth what it means to be a sibling, child, spouse, parent, and teacher. The remarkable, musical, and memorable voices in these strikingly crafted poems are haunting and dare us to reconsider the honesty of our own biomythographies.
—Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer
With The Gospel of God Boy, Christopher McCurry makes the subject of Guilt extremely palpable. personal. devout. This is a collection of flagellations—self-inflicted insights superimposed by familial relationships: The razor blade / reeks of torn meat / stinks of origin / the first stone / cracked open in heat. the cheap trick would be for us to call this collection epiphanous, but McCurry digs so deeply his animus that even moments of stark blasphemy reek with a sense of pure enlightenment—and this is how he brings us to Revelation. He says let there be birds / He wants to be understood literally.... He runs / a red light. A bit of recklessness / is just what he needs before / punching the clock. McCurry's writing here clings to the timeless notion of Apocrypha, but The Gospel of God Boy is how poetry rightfully articulates and represents its own private Genesis—every stanza a tithe, each confession an altar.
—upfromsumdirt, author of The Second Stop Is Jupiter
God Boy on the Way to Work
He says let there be birds.
He wants to be understood literally.
He wants the actual birds.
He wants the sky to choke,
the trees to be leafed in feathers.
Is this a plague, he wonders.
Should I make some stipulations?
Should I let one speak, but only
just once? In what language?
In emojis so there will be some
provocative and damning translations.
He cranks up the radio. He runs
a red light. A bit of recklessness
is just what he needs before
punching the clock.
Details and Ordering
Publication Date: March 15, 2025
Format: Softcover, 6" x 9"
ISBN: 978-1-961127-09-8
Price: $19.00
About the Author
A high school English teacher, Christopher McCurry was named the 2021 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year for his work teaching poetry and advocating for equity in Kentucky schools. In 2015, Christopher co-founded Workhorse, a press and community for working writers. The creator of Yearling, a Poetry Journal; The Poetry Gauntlet; and the Young Writers Conference, he believes everyone can write and everyone should. When he isn't teaching or writing, Chris is playing disc golf and board games with his family. The Gospel of God Boy is his second book of poetry.
In his second full-length poetry collection, Christopher McCurry immerses the reader into the world of God Boy and his struggles and complicated relationships with engaging and well-crafted poems that cannot leave us indifferent to the character's evolution.