"In a volume as compassionate as it is unsettling, Carey Salerno questions the moral authority assumed in the narrow confines of the animal shelter. Abu Ghraib haunts these lines as the shelter takes on harrowing, allusive dimensions, and as the narrator weighs her burden of complicity. Shelter is filled with fierce and desperate yowling, much of it our own."--Michael Waters Disturbing because of the cruelty intended as kindness to animals and the speaker's unflinching, relentless insistence on her culpability, these poems force us to consider whether we can be redeemed by our capacity for love, compassion, and personal responsibility. From "Certification": . . . shave a bit of tabby fur, pump the forearma little harder this time, careful with the needle, not too deep. Even the drugged cat's earspress the skull. She cannot miss its vein, focusing solely on the twenty-five cents raise. Wasn't that enoughto lean over and stab the heart, humor the vet's sensitivity? Compassion: the slabbed certificateon the wall reads so. In the name of all holies she, he, anyone willingto work for minimum wage may kill. Carey Salerno earned her MFA in poetry from New England College. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in such journals as Rattle and Natural Bridge. She currently works in publishing and lives with her husband in Boston.