Lost privilege company or the book of listening

The following poems operate under a strict constraint: they are composed entirely of phrases drawn from case files of inmates int he earliest youth prisons in California between 1910 and 1925. The histories contained in these files were gathered and archived by the now defunct Eugenics Records Office, an American organization that helped to shape the international eugenics movement through activities carried out in these reformatories. Originally compiled to justify the elimination of certain populations, the case files can now function-- contrary to their original purpose--as a mutable archive of infidel expression, practice, and knowledge.