Poetry. Here is poetry at once intense and resolute from a poet who captures the language of speech and gives it back to us--matter-of-fact--dressed in cruelty and kindness. In these poems, nothing is what it seems. Rather, things are what they arte, beneath the camouflage. Here are poems about shared memories, common experiences and everyday conflicts, presented with startling clarity. Hotchkiss' vision reminds us who we are with each new gasp of recognition. "Melissa Hotchkiss' poems have the powerful defamiliarizing quality of certain Eastern European films. One careful, oddly lighted take after another--focusing on very minute, ordinary things--suddenly releases an enormous spookiness, sadness, or longing"--Alan Williamson.