: boys is a cartography of scars, bloodlines, wounds that stretch between generations, between the living and the dead. These are poems lush with song, familial love, and the gritty intimacies of masculinity. Johnson writes a narrative lyric that breaks your heart and glues it back together again. From fields of ragweed to parking lots where El Caminos bump Beastie Boys, we hear a son’s cry, a father’s howl, a dark music that transcends the wounded world, Charting //a route from here to someplace in Heaven. - Kai Carlson-Wee, author of Rail (BOA Editions