The Boy Born with a Pinhole Heart

The Boy Born With A Pinhole Heart focuses on a Massachusetts boy becoming a man. As a boy at the beginning of the chapbook, he overcomes the emotional trauma from the death of his beloved grandparents. Following their deaths, challenges continue when his uncle dies, he's confronted with a family member being molested as an altar boy, and his father loses his job. When his mother's depression leads to hospice care, she ultimately dies. After his mother's funeral, he moves from Massachusetts to San Francisco. However, in his new city, he spirals into alcoholism. Through all these family tragedies and personal flaws, he stands on a Pacific Ocean beach in the last poem. As waves break anew, he in turn is a new man breaking anew.