Attempting to repair the fissures of everyday life, Brian Brodeur negotiates the psychological distances between desire and disgust, humour and catastrophe, banality and dream. These poems begin in the realm of personal experience, and expand into larger territories of cultural narcissism and political blindness. These poems meditate on the tenuous relationship between artist and subject, the curiosities of self-inflicted wounds, and the presence of hope in a landscape that is intrinsically scarred. Brodeur's debut illustrates the conflict between inner lives and their outward appearances, with an eye turned to the unforgiving natural world.