"With sheer wit and keen observation, Dobby Gibson's Skirmish puts into conflict the private and public selves, civil disobedience and civic engagement, fortunes told and fortunes made. These poems move from perception to perception with the speed of a mind forced moment by moment to make sense of distant war and local unrest, global misjudgment and suspicious neighbors, the splice-cuts of the media and the gliding leaves on the Mississippi River."--Jacket.