The notes at the back of et.stark’s new collection detail sources of italicized lines in her poems, from a proposed New Hampshire anti-abortion bill, to Rush Limbaugh’s lament on new university sexual consent policies, to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s remarks on the “positive” aspects of rape.

These are meditations, witnesses to damage, declarations of survival, scalpels. Small, bright lamps, lighting up the dark corners.

life is that gift from 

i struggled with it myself for a long time: 
is something i’d like to be able to say   
on some date farther-off.  

i have believed too many things in one day.  
have spent too much time in the garden 
asking bees and tulips about their gods.   

when i was eight i ruined a shovel 
trying to dig a hole wide-enough to lie down in.   
i would like to enter the mind 
of some-devout-something.   

if i believed in your god, 
i too would believe 
this is something that god intended to happen. 

Italicized portions: 
  Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, 
  while discussing God’s intentionality 
  in regards to rape and the victims thereof 
    (2012)