Capable Monsters moves through entries of the poké mon encyclopedia— the Poké dex— as a way to navigate concerns of identity: otherness, what it means to be considered a monster, how we fit into a larger societal ecosystem. To make space for the validity of oft-dismissed subject material, Marlin M. Jenkins asserts the symbolic, thematic, and narrative richness of worlds like the world of Poké mon: his poems use poké mon as a way to explore cataloguing, childhood, race, queerness, violence, and the messiness of being a human in a world of humans.