Inside these pages, verses sing of light in the dark, of unearthing dark pasts and reckoning them with a resilient fervor. Kristi Carter dredges up the old, the scarred, the traumatic, and weaves a stolid face into the rising sun of tomorrow. However, scars never leave-they fade, yet they remain. We are who we are because of our families, our old friends, our former lovers who made us weak in the knees yet somehow our knees do not grow weak anymore. When our mother births us, she is supposed to hold us-she is supposed to drip candle wax over her hands as she guides us through the unknown. In this collection, we can see all that has been lost, has never been known, and because of them, their effects on the individual. Aria Viscera is a reminder that sometimes it is necessary to grab the candle from your failed mother, your failed relatives, and your darkened past and find your own way around the tricks and traps of the coming present.