Maureen DuRant's Skirmishes on the Okie-Irish Border is both clear-eyed and open-hearted in its explorations of childhood, family, love, and those borders that both divide and define us. Humorous, candid, tender, they demonstrate a rare insight, engaging the world with plainspoken language and a canny wisdom. DuRant's poems skirmish at the fraught edges of language, winning ground page by page "in a battle to claim turf where tongues can hold their own." --Morri Creech