Summary

The shortest poem in the book, “Obliged to Perform in Darkness,” is composed almost entirely in terse, compact single lines. We return to the theme of light and dark, and the theme of the body’s “performance” under abject conditions raised in the first two poems in the collection, though the abbreviated intensity of “Obliged to Perform in Darkness” renews the vitality of Borzutsky’s critique by dramatizing what human life looks like when it amounts to “Checking boxes to indicate my identity” (62).

“The Broken Testimony” is perhaps the emotional focal point of the book, bringing into stark relief exactly why the speaker-poet feels compelled to write, and exactly what his writing—this collection of poems—amounts to. The poem is a dialogue between the speaker and his alienated body, a dramatic situation which increases the pathos of Borzutsky’s global political critique...