Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Art. The poems in this debut collection chart the passage of a metamorphosing self through euphoria, desire, despair, defiance, equanimity, grief, and loneliness. Appropriating freely from diverse poetic sources, the writer gives voice to a polyglot emotional range. Sanskrit poetics, Jazz lyrics, ekphrasis, the locutions of India's poet-saints, and the Anglo-American writing tradition all find place here. The book's chorus of figures--from Christ to Krishna to Caravaggio--move the reader between present and past, myth and history, bird and human, and across cities and continents.