In his sophomore book, Ray Shabir presents an almost religious celebration of pain, through the many lenses of pleasure. In these intimate, sometimes urgent poems, Ray retraces his steps back to his own origin of desire, to interrogate his own ideas of pleasure. For him, and perhaps quite a few of us, it starts with a wound that becomes our senses of what it’s like to want and be wanted. The poetry collection chronicles his way to reclaim his sense of self and find his relationship with power. Through its confessional fantasies and violent sensibilities, KINK is an attempt to find a place between dominance and submission, a search for stolen desires and a longing for relief.