With an unusual blend of playful language, absurdist humor, and striking parables of contemporary life, David Swanger passes on to us the hard and wonderful lessons of life and death, magic and pain. By exploring the divergent outlooks of men and women, considering the possibility of honesty in love, and sometimes drawing upon his Jewish ancestry, Swanger captures something about what it means to be human. Often provocative and occasionally outrageous, these poems inevitably make thematic connections that jolt the reader into viewing the ordinary in a new way.