How do we survive the undeserved and incomprehensible violence of the world we are born into? Mohring shows us the childhood and coming of age of a queer boy growing up in rural America, then the man wrestling with the memories. Gritty, vivid, and unflinching, these poems also demonstrate an elegance of style, a formal perfection that reassure the reader that goodness and power can yet come from fear and cruelty.