A plea for secular gods was written under the strain of spiritual crisis. The author lost his father and maternal grandparents over a short period of time between 2016 and 2017, which put him to working on something called The Death's Hand Elegies. This is what came of it-poems about families who do not talk anymore, strange manhoods shared across generations, memories of catastrophic failures, and the disappointment that entails being human. Poems, to be blunt, about death, sex, memory, and guilt. In the end, these are deeply religious poems written by a person who has felt, for a long time, the uncanny absence of gods.