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1. Cruise, as in, I didn’t plan to cruise 43 After driving all night, trying to reach 25 A glowing door’s inviting, just like people. 69 All my Ex’s 117 Am I 48 At first I didn’t get it: I thought it was just some scrap metal on the roof 14 A tornado of black skin and grease 31 At Sedan, Louis-Napoleon 81 At six, my cheeks were apple red. 72 Before, we pictured her without diamonds, 8 blonde fair bleached faded pale pastel light 132 Casting along the sand after the fish, 99 Clouds billow, full of light. 85 Clumsy at two, I slipped in the tub and cut 79 Come 92 Crowded among the others, Judas 118 Disaster can’t be held at bay: 60 Driving to the cemetery with everything 66 Evening gathers around them, silent 65 Every weekend morning, I’d sneak downstairs to play 53 Foolish to think your grief is over, 74 For a long time I wrote only about my brother, 68 For black girls 125 Gentlemen: how are you? Here things go well. 80 Gon’ be obedient in this here chair. 83 Great-granddaughter Molly—Annie and Robert’s daughter. 17 Hang it all, Ezra Pound, there is only the one sestina, 110 How I love to go to the dump that is not the dump 10 I can’t believe you’re going back to clean 27 I didn’t know much about Marilyn 21 I found an old clock. Wasting time, pretending 78 If Praxiteles had been an animator, this form 46 I have been losing a battle with a bird 120 I learn to live by guile, to do without love. 56 In the back bedroom, laughing when you pull 50 In the desert, one learns to love the permanence of rocks 103 I opened this poem with a yawn 113 It always happens in someone else’s house, 51 I tell myself there are no accidents, 128 It’s been three years since my last pair of glasses, 45 It’s been years since I’ve kept a garden, 93 It’s the story of America’s small towns. 3 “It’s time you learn to scrub a chicken.” 44 I walk to Coursegoules, a perched town few touch 98 Last night after supper with D. and B., a real game of whist. 47 Last night I dreamed my father died again, 86 Let me confess. I’m sick of these sestinas 109 March midnight creeps upstairs 75 Mid-September, and I miss my daughter. 67 My lust is an animal, some mystery all skin 49 No, I won’t sign my name to this piece of stone, 28 One nation, indivisible 11 Only at street corners did he take her hand, 73 On the bay, the waters stir as the sun goes down, 100 On the other side of the world 94 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 148 On the way home he asks me, If we cut off our 38 Out the window across the boundless Pacific Ocean swell 35 Pain threaded my hand 41 People in home movies are always turning 29 Power to the people— 5 Rain, a restful place: a plain 102 Scent of plumeria, and the smell of burning 70 Scrolling through the at-the-limit list of names, 121 She knew what it was like to be invisible, 54 She says she is my mother, I’m her daughter. 75 She still sees it in her sleep, the shooting. 20 Snowflakes soar on the updraft between cars 7 So many nights I’ve listened to the fugue 71 Some question reminds him of the last time 76 Some things I have to say aren’t getting said 59 Somewhere in everyone’s head something points toward home, 122 “So, take six words you love. 114 Sunday night I takes my woman to a party. 4 The asparagus, the ivy, and the anonymous 42 The farm welcomes us with sheepdogs. 96 The grave and measured fury of her hand 87 The mouth of the harbor and the mountains are bleached 104 The name of the house was spelled out in wrought iron 101 There are six stories humans recognize. 40 There is a grand piano in the corner of the room 105 There is really only one way to write a sestina. 112 There’s no rain forecast for mid- 95 These dried-out paint brushes which fell...

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