Nigliazzo creates word combinations that are luminous and tender, and that go beyond their literal meaning. Consider, for example, "Owling air" and "greenstick heart" ("Nocturne" page 6), or "the Malbec sky" ("Talisman" page 30). In another poem, "Cloudburst," a woman in a car accident strikes the windshield, and the scattering "silver glass" becomes "stars unpinned" (page 19). In "Say It," the moon is "a pail of warm milk" (page 35).  Reading, we might imagine this "milk" spilling over as moonlight.

As a practicing ER nurse, Nigliazzo becomes, in these poems, an especially astute witness,        using her condensed, lovely, and metaphoric language to let readers enter both the patient's experience and the caregiver's. Here is the entire poem, "Harvesting Her Heart," on page 29 (although not presented here with the poet's spacing of words and lines): "And when the surgeon pierced her breastbone-- / quickening /  light--  / scatter of fireflies." 

Such multi-layered metaphors also serve to enhance the sorrow and despair often experienced by patients or caregivers.  In "Because the eyelet," the narrator expresses an emotion perhaps often felt by nurses or physicians overwhelmed with the powerful scenarios they witness: "ripped clean, / I slipped off my dress, tore a seam / in my hip, / crept into the river, / unraveled-- / I have no edge" (page 13).