Searing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award-winning author. Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina's life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city-but the breadth of a country-away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much "a body will hold," reaching from the border to the poet's own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.

Foreword by Gregory PardloIIf I Die in Juárez13 Ways of Knowing HerOur First YearMy Father’s Family Fasts the Slaughter to Feast the Arrival of His BrideThe KissLate September, When the Heat ReleasesMeditations on Living in the DesertAdmit Impediments. Love Is Not LoveContinental SplitAt a PartyIIPanicGedankenexperimentsA Loaf of BreadAfter DinnerThe Eyes Open to a CryIn Their Dark HabitsKastanyasHow to Care for a Man, WithdrawingIn StepBecause “Some Women AreDisplaced Women’s BluesYou Say You Can’t SleepThai MassageBodies, and Other Natural DisastersFor Want of WaterIIIRose is a Rose is a Rose is a RoseAutopsy:How we come to smoke:High, high, high:Autopsy, Juárez:Tale, two cities:High and low:Crack rock, a hard place:Autopsy, us:Drug war:How we love to score / (buying glass pipes at the barrio store):IVSea ChangeAt the Symphony: 7 Things I Wish I’d Told You[ Rules for Behaving on an Airplane ] & Simultaneous Monologue on Your Separate GriefLast Photograph of My Mother LaughingWhen in Solitude, the Surprise of MorningLeaving the University GymTuesday Night in MontparnasseMoment in StormMarking. Connecting: Between Going and Stopping,—Old Beds and HollywoodSchool Terrorist Exercise, 2005VWhat Is BrokenBefore DawnWe’re Really Not OkayGolden Shovel: at the Lake’s Shore, I Sit with His Sister, RestingGrave, ma non troppo trattoSafely Watching a Solar Eclipse with KuyaOrisonWhile My Lover RestsTouched By Dusk, We Know Better OurselvesLines I’ve Stolen, and Other NotesCredits and Acknowledgments