Beatty has developed a distinct style ripe with resonant imagery and hilarious witticisms. The poems vary greatly in length, but each rings with a subtle, Mingus-like cadence. With awe-inspiring success, "Joker, Joker, Deuce" maintains a complex rhythm cover to cover. In between two longer poems, "At Ease" and "That's Not in My Job Description," Beatty inserts the song, "Why That Abbott and Costello Vaudeville Mess Never Worked with Black People": "who's on first? / i dont know, your mama." A number of these short, intriguing absurdities hide between the pages of fast-paced monologue and tragic irony. In "Two Pink Dots? You Positive?" a teenage mother recalls the birth of her son -- how she hated the baby because of the vileness of the world she had brought him into, and how her love for the child makes it possible for her to endure the injustices she suffers. There is humor in almost every line, no matter how grave the issue, and, somehow, it is the humor that testifies to the honesty and legitimacy of all that Beatty has to say.