Chamber after Chamber is about what fractures, fixes, and refills the hearts of two girls as they grow into women. A loose narrative in three sections, the poems follow a speaker and her cousin through their hardscrabble, backwoods childhood to their separationboth physical and emotionalas adults. From the make-believe apocalypses and cut-and-paste valentines of elementary school to the stadium-seating classrooms and multiplexes of southern China, our speaker tries to leave the shame and dysfunction of her family behind. In China, she begins to see Americaand herselfclearly for the first time, and in doing so discovers that both her cousin and her country are inextricably woven into

[her body] part that never sleeps the blood
and chambered meat thats like a rock squeezed
in a fist rapping its knuckles
on the sweet door of the body.