In this luminous first collection, Carlos Hiraldo knocks down the bland edifice of contemporary poetry and replaces it with real poems that resound and shock and illuminate. As Machu Picchu grows from the mountain, gathers itself stone by stone and bursts into the sky, so these poems take the stuff of life and raise up a new, vibrant city built on love, poverty, racism, sweetness, violence...

Tavius Dyer looks at the parts of himself he hasn't wanted to look at--those hiding in the shadows--and brings them into the open for re-integration. The poems move from darkness to recovery by creatively exploring a self sometimes reluctant to step into the light. Near-death experiences, incarceration, divorce, and the loss of an only child are motivations to finding the other side. ...