Publisher's Synopsis
"A sardonic burlesque with "the intransigence of the femme," pain survey plumbs queer desire while stripping American necropolitics down. Its lyric reportage cross-examines imperial ghosts haunting this century's "forever wars" - "the witness a funnel of fire with a human body at the center" - across Damascus, Beirut, Istanbul and NYC. Wresting evidence from daily hells nested in their denial, the poems indict global capital's viral avatars cheerleading depredation: "Exchange rate porn: as their currency slides rapidly downward against our very strong dollar. Here come the villas filching water." Pitted against this supersized death wish, the poems find creaturely kinship with doves nesting in shell-pocked walls and captive crocodiles' homesick refusal to fight in gladiator contests. Within precarity, they celebrate getting "plump with joy," offering fugitive communion across languages and borders. Fierce, piercing, and exuberant, pain
