Phillips's debut full-length collection, the book is a love letter to the desert and an indictment of human folly. Phillips's poetry is universal and historical: he addresses culture, the environment, and our borderlands history.

"Time Served is a rich and rigid work cementing Carlos Contreras as a major voice of the American Southwest. In these tragic yet lovingly rendered confessions Contreras examines the physical and emotional prisons forced upon us."--Idris Goodwin, author of These Are the Breaks