To the Mormon Newlyweds Who Thought the Bellybutton Was Somehow Involved

This extraordinary poetry collection opens with the author as a little girl delighted with the jewelry being sold by a vendor along the beach, unaware that the bowtied rabbit earrings symbolize the Playboy empire.

In navigating her life as a free-spirited Mormon, each of Earley’s poems expresses the tension she feels in adhering to and expanding the confines of her faith. From awkward first kisses shared on a church couch to refusing to talk to men who are not Mormon “lest I fall from grace, on my ass,” her poems remain funny, wry, thoughtful. Despite the promise not to talk to non-Mormon men, her final poems detail her marriage to a Catholic husband who offers Hail Mary prayers after a lost pregnancy while she struggles to find comfort from an elusive Mother in Heaven. Despite their differences and moments of heartache, they thrive, allowing themselves to “imagine we’re floating in bright bubbles of light.” It is an emotional roadmap for anyone else facing such tensions, joys, and accommodations.

Deja Earley describes herself as a “sassy Mormon,” as?she demonstrates at the Busy Heart blog. She is passionate?about “quilting, thrifting, fluffy pillows, Mexican food,?Fiona Apple, singing made-up songs, London, Project?Runway, and cats.” She has been published in the Bat City?Review, Blue Mesa, Iodine Poetry Journal, Lilliput Review,?Sunstone, Talking River, and the Utne Reader, and in two?collections: Fire in the Pasture and the Southern Poetry?Anthology. She and her husband, Sam, live in Boston.