It explores the theme of violence committed by the state against its citizens, often combining mundane phraseology and jokes with grotesque imagery.
was posted by Borzutzky, who ponders if the expression of poetry can thwart the internal feelings of darkness and loneliness felt by those who emigrate.
These poems ask how we (or maybe how dare we) experience the tragedies of oppression and cruelty as if they were as mundane as making the bed: "They chopped up two dozen bodies last night and today I have to pick up my dry cleaning."
Healey remarked on the poetry's "prosaic tendencies", which he saw as connected to the "Latin American tradition—that impulse toward loud and rambling lines, surrealism and biting humor, empathy with common people against political oppression, as found in the work of César Vallejo, Nicanor Parra, and the more contemporary Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, whose work Borzutzky has translated into English".
[5] Following the National Book Award, Borzutzky was criticized for his language: "diction described as flat and repetitive; imagery deemed unrelentingly repellent; an authorial tone rejected as the un-poetic rantings of an ideologue".