“Like the mystery bruise of the title poem, these memento mori are livid imprints left behind by collisions with life, tattooed reminders of emotional confrontations. But Terry Wolverton is a survivor of her deep passions. Her heart beats on despite its contusions and pulses underneath the corpus of her experience like a wellspring of life under the painful intimations of mortality. This is a remarkable body of work.”—Michael Lassell, author of A Flame for the Touch That Matters“Terry Wolverton’s passionate achievement crackles with unsparing revelations from the dark side of the American Dream—epidemics, urban unrest, and a girlhood which might have been conjured in the imagination of Norman Rockwell’s diabolical twin. Into this end-of-the-century landscape, peopled by casualties, survivors, and warriors, she direcfts the manifold redeeming powers of poetry: to bear witness, to exorcise, to shore up—and hold fast among us—memories of those lost.”—Suzanne Lummis, author of In Danger“In Mystery Bruise, poems of loss and troubled adolescence give way to songs of healing and self-assertiveness. Terry Wolverton looks us straight in the eye, channels raw experience into lean columns, staunch forms. Her poems sting with the truth, the toxic times we live in, yet offer hope, instruct us how to reshape who we are.”—David Trinidad, author of Answer Song