Set on the marshlands of working-class southern New Jersey, Python with a Dog Inside It traces the tangled story of two gay brothers as they endeavor to survive their mother's erratic and escalating violence. They retreat to the privacy of suburban woods and swamps, a world of their own glimmering with ruin and possibility: abandoned furniture, mud-caked jewelry, a time machine. The poems in this collection occupy, as Judith Herman describes it, the space between " the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim it aloud." Ultimately, Python with a Dog Inside It is not only a story of survival, but one of redemption; by proclaiming the events of a particular, harrowing childhood, McDonough invents a future beyond it, one marked by radical openness, hope's flame brighter for the darkness.