Poems.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-70).

Performing a warped masculinity en route to the Metro -- Witness to the woman I am not -- Pushing up onto its elbows, the fable lifts itself into fact -- Nothing was ever itself only -- Take it out of the boy -- Any unkindness -- Portrait with stiff upper lip -- Slough -- Anesthesia is a country you leave for America -- pleas -- The day ___ died -- Gateway -- About a white city -- A statement from no one, incorporated -- The requital -- Snowfall throws its pretty noise upon a weary sameness -- How to keep it down/throw it off/defer until asleep -- On being a grid one might go off of -- Retrograde -- Untitled (we aint even posed to be here) -- Porch smoke: an implication in three acts -- I wish I knew how it would feel -- On self-reliance -- Consent -- Exit hex -- Orientation -- Necessary room -- To every faggot who pulverized me for being a faggot -- Black can sleep -- On life as an exercise in preparing to die -- Carolina prayer -- Exchange -- The leak in this old building -- The fratricide -- Theory for expansion -- They speak of the body and one sits up straight -- A victim dissolves into tears -- Paroxysm.

"Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful--the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us."--Amazon.com.