Beckian Fritz Goldberg invites the reader into a shadowy atmosphere where her language prowls among strange images -- hummingbirds become a "fistful of violet amphetamines" and desire gnaws away like a "live rat sewed up inside of us". Reading this collection is like entering a graphic novel with missing panels, a noir world of queasy glints and feral adolescents, "a world where no one has to love you". Characters go by odd names -- Torture Boy, Skin Girl, Lala Petite, Wolf Boy (his body "pale as the plucked end of light") -- punk kids fending for themselves in the expressionistic version of those old stories "that began, Let's take the children out to the woods / and leave them". And on every page, there's Goldberg's hard-edged wit, with the speed and flash of a video game. These poems show mercy but give no ground. They make you feel heartbroken and frightened and exhilarated at the same time.