When I first encountered Bloodmercy, I was struck not only by its daring reimagining of Cain and Abel but also by the way I.S. Jones threads myth, memory, and personal history into a tapestry that feels both ancient and urgent. Winner of the prestigious APR/Honickman Prize—selected by the incomparable Nicole Sealey—this debut collection refuses silence. It speaks in the voices of sisters bound by braid and blood, navigating betrayal, desire, queerness, and survival under the shadow of family and faith.
In our conversation, I.S. Jones reflects on the book’s bold cover, the hard truths writing demanded of her, and how mercy—understood not as softness, but as clarity—entered her revision process. What emerges is a portrait of a poet unafraid to confront wounds of childhood, to question biblical inheritances, and to carve new language for what it means to be a daughter, a sister, and a witness.
It was an honor to sit with I.S. and discuss the making of Bloodmercy—a collection that insists on telling the truth about our lives, even when the world would rather look away.
Darius Phelps: Before I even pressed record, I told you how obsessed I was with the cover of Bloodmercy. Can you tell us about how you chose it—the background behind it, and what it means to the book?
I.S. Jones: My best friend Julian David Randall was integral to this book even existing and also offered suggestions for the cover.. He’s very modest, but I insist he deserves some credit. Even the concept for the book cover was something we envisioned together. I knew I wanted two Black girls bound together by a single braid, which symbolized an umbilical cord—a bond that lasts forever. I wanted the cover to feel distinctly African yet futuristic. I think often about the adage: “There are Black people in the future”. This cover speaks directly to that.
I started writing the book in 2017, and that was the same year I knew what the cover would be. That early choice shaped the collection—because covers matter. Many readers won’t even pick up a book with an uninspired one. Sight itself became a recurring motif throughout Bloodmercy. One girl, Cain, stares directly into the camera with a knowing gaze; Abel, the one canonically betrayed, looks away—suggesting innocence, or a betrayal yet to come.
DP: Your book opens with the line: “Violence is a failure of communication” in “After the ritual, Cain carries Abel home.” Throughout the collection, you recast Cain and Abel as sisters navigating a negligent father in the aftershame of Eve. What hard truth did writing these sisters demand of you—and what repair, if any, did the work make possible in your own sense of family?
ISJ: This book mirrors my own life, of course,—growing up with a negligent father, living in the shadow of my mother’s choices. I realized Cain and Abel represent my childhood selves, while Eve embodies my adult womanhood. At its core, Bloodmercy is about healing childhood wounds.
Initially, I thought I was just reimagining a fable, but as I wrote, I had to confront difficult truths. For example, Abel is coded as gay in the book. That was me facing my own queerness—knowing young but terrified me couldn’t come out in a household where my mother openly rebuked homosexuality. The sisters also allowed me to process my complicated bond with my own sibling hood. [My sister and I] were inseparable as children, but drifted apart right before adulthood. Unlike the biblical tale, my poems let the sisters part ways—still bound, but unwilling to call each other “sister” anymore. That ambiguity reflects both myth and my lived reality.
DP: The book is set between the Old Testament and the present. How did that landscape shape your formal choices—the line breaks, white space, silences on the page?
ISJ: My sister always colored inside the lines; I bent the lines. I wanted to invert that on the page with the titular poems— “Bloodmercy” (Cain and Abel’s version). Abel’s words fracture into white space while Cain’s are more ordered, more polished. By the end of the book, I imagined the sisters in their early twenties—Abel embracing her queerness, Cain releasing the perfectionism of people-pleasing. The form mirrors their transformations, subverting expectation.
DP: You let Bloodmercy itself speak last in the collection. Why did you choose to close with that title poem?
ISJ: I always knew if Cain began the book, then Abel had to end it. Abel has no voice in the Bible—only her death defines her. Giving her the last word was a way to make her complex, to grant her agency.
Formally, I was influenced by Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo & Youth and Moonchild’s Voyager, albums that taught me about cyclical structure and ordering. I drafted multiple endings but kept returning to the truth: the final poem had to address a childhood wound, in Abel’s voice. Ending with Bloodmercy was both necessary and right.
DP: Nicole Sealey chose your manuscript for the APR/Honickman Prize. With her introduction framing the work, how did you navigate risk, removal, and mercy in revision?
ISJ: Honestly, I had a dream editorial process. My editor, Elizabeth Scanlon, gave me every extension I needed and honored every request. It felt very collaborative, not prescriptive. That mattered, because many poets I know have had the opposite experience—handing their book to an editor who doesn’t care for it with urgency and respect those books deserved.
Mercy, in revision, meant softening the way I wrote about my mother. I held onto truth, but also allowed compassion to enter. Eve, too, becomes central here: in my version, she is given the choice to burn Eden down herself. That reclamation of choice felt crucial, especially since I’ve always hated how Milton portrayed her.
Receiving this prize, and being the first Black woman to do so, is both wonderful and precarious. But when I finally held the book, every detail was as I envisioned—the cover, the ordering, the introduction by Nicole. That satisfaction was unlike anything I’d felt in my artistic life.
DP: For young poets—especially young girls—picking up Bloodmercy and finding their voice, what advice would you give them?
ISJ: Tell the truth about your life. It may set the world on fire, but that’s the work. Don’t let the projections of others—about your sexuality, your body, your art—dictate who you are. You don’t have to tolerate what insults your soul. People may not understand your vision, or you, until it’s complete.
When I was writing this book, I was advised to change the title, or not to write about Cain and Abel. But I knew they were the first siblings—the beginning of language for betrayal, loyalty, and love. Bloodmercy became the language I needed, and I hope it becomes language for others, too.
At the end of the day, I answer to God, my momma, and whoever cuts me a check. Everyone else? I keep writing.
Darius Phelps is a poet, educator, and scholar whose work explores grief, identity, and liberation through poetic inquiry. He is a Poetry Co-Editor at Matter, Associate Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and the author of the forthcoming My God’s Been Silent.
I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy, chosen by Nicole Sealey as the winner of the 2025 APR / Honickman First Book Prize and the chapbook Spells of My Name, selected by Newfound in 2021 for their Emerging Writers Series. Currently, she is a Senior Editor for Poetry Northwest, where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. Her works have appeared in Granta, LA Review of Books, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. While she has lived in many places across the U.S., she gratefully calls Chicago home.