Jaw

Across these poems, a splinter is removed from a child's hand by a figure called America, and a man crouches under a body to escape Japanese soldiers. Elsewhere, God sits down to a meal of Spam, white rice, and a fried egg. The collection examines everyday microaggressions in the United States and sets American and Filipino cultures against each other on the page. Its subjects include immigration, identity, and family.

The poems go into the most tender and painful parts of a life. In one, a grandfather's body decays in a coffin while a little boy sleeps in a room across the hall. Taken together, the book asks readers to work through the tangled questions of place, selfhood, and the experience of Filipino immigrants.