'Natalie D-Napoleon’s First Blood is a systematic demolition and rebuilding of the construct of girlhood. With an assured hand, D-Napoleon succinctly expresses the seemingly ineffable. Often, her keen stylus writes afresh over and across palimpsestic earlier texts in a processing of erasing, effacing, and replacing. D-Napoleon’s aesthetic is spare but neither sparse nor Spartan, as these poems are servings of selfhood that remain generous even in the face of antagonism.' (Introduction)