Loss destabilizes. black seeds on a white dish is a chronicle of loss and the way lives and language must be reshaped after that destabilization. The losses explored in the volume include the loss of a family: a young brother to a fatal illness, a mother to disappointment, and a father to rage and insanity. The book meditates on the loss of romantic love, the impersonal violence of war and terrorism made visceral on 9/11, and hopes and expectations for a future that may never arrive.