Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral

Contents

Contents The Pearl 1 I The Door Flies Open 5 Nocturnal 6 This Time We’ll Go to Kentucky Fried Chicken 8 Coney Island, 1977 9 The Blue Dress with the Daisies 11 We Move to a House Where He Never Lived 12 The Goose Girl 14 Penny Poker 16 May 18, 1980 17 When She Married Him 19 “A Woman Was Raped Here” 20 Cecilia 22 After the Hysterectomy 23 Elegy with Carousel and Doorknob 24 Cefalu 25 Ars Poetica 27 II The Deaf Girls 31 Hide and Seek 32 Donut Parade 34 Flight 36 Muddy Waters 38 Mr. Birdsell, Room 108 39 Even Though I Know the Door to Our Compartment Won’t Lock 40 Salt of the Earth 41 Wyoming 43 Seatac 45 In Paris Women Walk in the Dark 47 July 49 The Big Dipper 50 Menlo 51 The Flower Horses 53 Paper Clothes 54 Watching Oksana 55 III Merge 59 Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral 61 Long Distance 63 You Flew across the Map 65 For the Bible Tells Me So 67 Something about Winning 69 Community College 71 The Little Mermaid, the Long Version 73 For Matthew, Who Doesn’t Love the Sea 75 The House on North Stevens 77 How to Be Sad 78 At the Chicago Art Institute, My Mother Tells Me to Write a Poem about Jeannette 79 About a Baby 84 Trying to Contact Neil Diamond 86 Acknowledgments 89 In s tr u c t io n s for My Mo t h er ’s Fu n er a l ...