The book states plainly that both its speaker and the speaker's mother have suffered near deadly head injuries. However, rather than let a taxonomy like ""family curse"" sit unquestioned, Green writes toward the fugues (the condition of having one's identity questioned) by making a kind of fugue (interweaving song).

Michael McKee Green is the author of the micro-chapbook Blue Portrait, as well as the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize. In 2016, his poem "A Remit" won the Tom and Phyllis Burnam Poetry Scholarship. Currently, he is an MFA candidate at Boise State University.