These are breath-taking poems: provocative and uncompromising in their relentless anatomies of the subjected body.  In these fiercely intelligent poems Wong creates wheels of revelations and then rolls them right through our assumptions.

The only permanent architecture is the act of undoing, Nicholas YB Wong writes in his poem "Demolition," and by that standard, the poems in Cities of Sameness are recitations of whimsical and enduring edifices that loosen the strands of dulled perception until what's truly original radiates and compels. This extraordinary first collection includes the little known anatomical facts of poets, the wily tricks of the Monkey King and the gift of a penis for Sharon Olds. Wong is the future of global poetry, refracting Hong Kong through the lens of American poetics and masterfully peopling his poems with bodies, anonymous and intimate, that take shape to touch us in new forms before disappearing in a haze of longing. Everybody has the same, the title poem assures us, but this is a collection unlike any other, announcing the arrival of a marvelous new voice.