Charleston House

The photo above was taken by Lucca Lorzeni, fellow student of the study abroad program conducting digital humanities research in London, and depicts the living room of Charleston house-- home to Duncan Grant and many other Bloomsbury group members

“For,’ the outsider will say, “in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country...”

– Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas;

  inspired by a visit to Charleston House and conscientious objection


And for God so loved the world,

that he chose to forsake every single

one of those soldiers, so that they

would become rotting piles


of shit and dust to be blown away,

into the wind, by a wave of

gunpowder and blasts of deafening

noise– he loved them, so he


sent them off to the high heavens

where the Priests and Bishops

claimed their desecrated bodies

as sinners for the murderers they committed–


the ones they told them to commit,

so that their pale white hands

would be clean and supple

but riddled with the most blood.


Aaron Asparin

This poem comments on the famous quote from the Bible, at John 3:16 through the first line: "and for God so loved the world." It is a representation of my anger towards war-- a social construct created for the purposes of "God knows what," and while I happen to be of the Christian denomination, it pains me to see that heart-wrenching death and destruction still exists in a world created in His light, and under His power.