Becoming Judas

The second collection by Nicelle Davis, Becoming Judas is an elemental bible-diary-manifesto, a hypertext that weaves together Mormonism, Mamaism, Manson, Lennon, the Kabbalah, and the lost Gospel of Judas into an ecstatic, searing meditation on raw religion.

The second collection by Nicelle Davis, Becoming Judas, is an \u201celemental bible-diary-manifesto,\u201d that weaves together Mormonism, Mamaism, Manson, Lennon, Kabbalah, and the lost Gospel of Judas into am ecstatic, searing meditation on raw religion. Nicelle Davis is a poet with an eye towards the spiritual. Loosely based on Davis’s upbringing in the back-room of a record store in Mormonville, Utah, this unexpected fusion becomes a \u201cspontaneous combustion\u201d of matter turning into energy. In these poems we encounter Jesus, Judas, YouTube, Joseph Smith, Hollywood, the Knights of Templar, Missouri, Utah, a prostitute, turnips, libraries, and God. Spirituality and faith eventually become, like Mallarm\u00e9’s \u201cDice Thrown,\u201d a game of chance: \u201cI know only chance. My feet will / won’t hit ground.\u201d Instead of choosing a faith based in the material world, which becomes a roll of the dice, Davis embraces the non-material of a pure energy: Let there be light.