The people and creatures in The Ones Consumed become absorbed-figuratively or literally-by the world around them. Though the absorption often destroys them, the section opens and closes with poems which reveal the can be compensation and justice in the process. Separate States deals with the experiences of those who find themselves cut off from the lives most familiar to them. This separation results in their gaining knowledge stronger and deeper than the kind offered by the surfaces of the commonplace. Isolation has more severe physical and emotional consequences for the people of the poems...