Surveille’s queer speaker is on the cusp of motherhood, vacillating between attentiveness and paranoia. Exploring drone strikes, scorpion eradication, bird behavior, mating deer, ICE detainees, and family relationships, Caitlin Roach’s poems stare into and through the truth with a blazing intensity. This is a book about control (self-inflicted and external), about watching and being watched (by oneself, by others, by the state), and about the desperate search for meaning in a world that feels increasingly violent and filled with despair.

Caitlin Roach earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, she lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their two sons.

[one]
The Rut
The Inheritance of Intelligence
Doe after Lightning Storm
Heirloom
Hunter, Snow Goose, Shadow
Gardening, the Mother Gives Her Daughter a Lesson on Loss
At the Window
Plea
Witness Statement

[two]
Heronry
Nine Days after the Drowning
On Christmas Eve
Out of Bounds
Host
Derivations
In the Conservatory
In Oakland Cemetery

[three]
Principles of Design [Las Vegas, Nevada]
Cancer, by Definition, Is an Abnormal Cell Growing Out of Control
American Landscape [on an American Airlines flight to Las Vegas, Nevada]
American Landscape [on the 11 bus, Albuquerque, New Mexico]
American Landscape [neighbor under wisteria on Marquette Avenue]
American Landscape [Friendship Park, San Diego, Tijuana]

[four]
Exit
Birth Story
Animal Mechanics
Birth Story
Nocturne
Letters to Bernadette

Notes
Acknowledgments