Chamber After Chamber

Chamber after Chamber is about what fractures, fixes, and refills the hearts of two girls as they grow into women. A loose narrative in three sections, the poems follow a speaker and her cousin through their hardscrabble, backwoods childhood to their separation-both physical and emotional-as adults. From the make-believe apocalypses and cut-and-paste valentines of elementary school to the stadium-seating classrooms and multiplexes of southern China, our speaker tries to leave the shame and dysfunction of her family behind. In China, she begins to see America-and herself-clearly for the first time, and in doing so discovers that both her cousin and her country are inextricably woven into [her body] part that never sleeps the blood and chambered meat that's like a rock squeezed in a fist rapping its knuckles on the sweet door of the body.