In St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped, Ann Cefola rides the limn of prosaic disaster, from the loss of a neighborhood landmark, to a near-drowning, reprieves, and irrevocable losses. Each harbinger of mortality softly and insistently reiterates our piquant, poignant longing for meaning. And like the line from her poem, “Kerning,” Cefola’s work asserts the necessary optimism of a survivor: “In the text you create rivers of light.”