In Cristina Rivera Garza's poems there are instant soups, orange plastic chairs, wedges of tangerines, flannel robes, sequins, mascara and laughter, a cashier hanging out change, fries, peppermint tea or orange tea or jasmine tea, Valium, two packs of Marlboro Lights, three-hundred aspirins, glasses of milk, plastic flowers, trash cans, metal desks, sardine cans, telephone wires, ambulances, jukeboxes. There are also characters such as the Big Woman, the Ex-Sleeping, the Ex-Dead, the Devil, the Beast, the Submerged, the Helpless, the Lonely, and those with Three Hearts Inside Their Chest. In addition to some of the lines she uses at the beginning of her children's stories to plunge us into a kind of daydream or rarefaction, conducive to the sort of tales we are about to read: Once upon a time. Or twice. That which was. That which had been or that which would have been.