The dark humor of E. Michael Desilets’ poetry ranges over the nasty doings from Nanking to Oaxaca, snaking back through the underbelly of America’s pop cultural highways and byways. These are “Men slicing baloney so thin it had only one side,” as exquisitely aware of their own defects as they are of the tilted landscape, yet still, every now and then, transported enough to “buy a pair of Lee jeans at Sears / one size too small / because I never bet / against hope. “