Daring and witty, erotic and searching, these poems explore the ways we suffer and are changed by our losses.

"Think about sex," this book begins, then moves through the places into which our longings lead us. Here are confessions whispered over the phone in "Phone Sex," sins recounted to priests, "pretend confessions" told to a sister. Here are poems about a mother teaching a daughter to read, a girl trying to read her mother, a woman trying to read lovers, and marriage, and herself.