Marrow

"Grape is the sweetest betrayal.
There is no removing the stain
of it say moms everywhere &
even if kids choose it last,
they choose it, as loyal
to its sugar as any."

When authorities converged on the Guyanese settlement of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project—founded by James "Jim" Jones and popularly known as Jonestown—on November 18, 1978, more than nine hundred members were found dead, the result of murder-suicide. The massacre was the largest mass loss of American lives before September 11, 2001. Although the events at Jonestown inspired a common idiom in "Don't drink the Kool-Aid," the personal histories of those who were lost have been treated as a footnote to the tragedy—little has been written about those individuals and their lived experiences.

In this profound and provocative poetry collection, darlene anita scott foregrounds that which has been disremembered and honors the people who perished at Jonestown. She amplifies the voices of the children, teenagers, and adults whose hopes, dreams, and lives were just as hopeful and mundane as any others yet have been overlooked and overshadowed by the circumstances of their untimely loss. The distinct, haunting, and unforgettable poems in Marrow cut to the bone while also acknowledging and giving tribute to the people who were lost on that fateful day.