Heart-corroding sex with a tin woodman. A foundering marriage like a cat on the brink of death that still manages to purr. Sharon McCartney's visceral exploration of relationships — how they begin and end, the tenuous threads that hold people together, and the events that can tear them apart is unstinting, eyes-wide-open aware. Beginnings, endings, transitions — none elude the sometimes sardonic but always sinuous language of these finely wrought poems.