The poems in Joan Colby's chapbook BROKE were engendered by an accident in which several of the author's bones were broken. This led her to contemplate aspects of the word "broke." Due to a badly fractured wrist, the poems were laboriously printed with the non-dominant hand, which captures how the fact of brokenness, like the word itself, insinuates both damage and repair. Ironically, X rays of the tension-wire hardware used to secure Colby's shattered kneecap were eerily identical to the symbol for extinction shown on the chapbook's cover.