About this item

An award-winning and hard-hitting new voice in contemporary American poetryThe first time I ever came the light was weak and carnivorous.I covered my eyes and the night cleared its dumb throat.I heard my mother wringing her hands the next morning.Of course I put my underwear on backwards, of course the elastic didn't work.What I wanted most at that moment was a sandwich.But I just nursed on this leather whip.I just splattered my sheets with my sadness. -- from "Poem of My Humiliations""What is life but a cross / over rotten water" Poet, novelist, and essayist Erika L. Snchez's powerful debut poetry collection explores what it means to live on both sides of the border -- the border between countries, languages, despair and possibility, and the living and the dead.