Sex and death are truisms. We begin through the act of one and the other is the ultimate exit. Deathless, Catherine Balaq’s astonishing second collection, moves between the two, expanding on tropes of sexuality and creation acts with a core of sonnets that speak back to their origins. Both traditional and modern, the poems in Deathless turn the male gaze into the female subject and thrillingly place life’s darkness in chiaroscuro contrast with beauty and light.