In the impracticality of silk, jo reyes-boitel examines and critiques the dominant world through poetry and prose, specifically addressing gender, sexuality, the borderlands, and canonized art as they view it to foment a new understanding and voice during a time of societal and personal shifts. Further complicating the author’s understanding are questions around desire both within reclaimed sensuality and within Audre Lorde’s larger understanding of desire as foundational and necessary in creation and liberation, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s use of autohistoria-teoria and her work within borderlands as ways toward reevaluating and reclaiming identity and place in the larger world. Throughout, the author attempts to replace limited views of their own body and identity with expansive thinking around themselves and their surrounding world, “to self-destruct and take everything with me // which requires a plan.” Within these pages there is a dare:  “Here: my shoulders, stronger than ever, / no longer burdened. // Here: my back never compromised. / Here: these mountainous thighs. / Here now: all this unencumbered skin. // In celebration. Like a bribe, my flesh cast out again and again. // Try to swallow this river – I dare you – but still it’s mine.”