Heather Haley's poetry is tough, irreverent, and in-your-face. She asks all the questions that a nice girl's not supposed to ask. Down back roads and highways, her characters long to possess the past and harness the future. Cowboys, car accidents, broken hearts, dead lovers—and potential violence—hover like heat on the horizon. Whether they're gangsta girls or riot grrrls, roaming the range or pacing the mall, Haley's women are always in the forefront, in the driver's seat, crankin' the wheel in their direction. Like wild horses bustin' loose, or an explosion in the kitchen, Haley's women know "e;how heady power is, how it lathers beneath a mount."e; Her characters bite life on the neck and take what they need; and just when they think it's gone, meaning happens. This is brawny and uncompromising language from a voice that demands to be reckoned with.