These Are Not My Words

Echoing Chuck Palahniuk's statement, "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known," this collection explores identity. These poems drift down rivers of old, using histories private and public and visit with people that I love and loathe. Through heroes and villains, music and cartoons, literature and comics, science and wonder, and shadow and light, each poem canals the various channels of self and invention. As in the poem, "Credentials," "I am a collage of memories and unicorn stickers . . . [by] those that have witnessed and been witnessed."