"I'd like to be a painter," writes Lisa Dart in these brief, stunning portraits. Each prose-poem is addressed, epistle-like, to her mother, as though the once strikingly beautiful red-head, now diminished by illness, loss, and age, into a white-haired rarely lucid woman, might explain the inexplicable truths of their entwined and tragic history. A train's evening-lit passing, sheepskin ankle boots with snow melting on their tread, the pulse of an emergency room heart monitor- this lyrical and searing language paints a moving picture of the painful but ultimately loving relationship at the fluttering heart of this collection.