In these poems, well-known spaces both reassure and imperil, and language both anchors and disorients. Molly Spencer's speakers navigate the landscape of human experience, building upon the cycles of a household throughout the seasons of the year. Ordinary places and things—a kitchen table, a memory, a beloved's thigh—are viewed as if through the lens of a shifting, unsettling kaleidoscope. This incisive collection suggests that the imagined comfort we find in familiarity and routine belies the unease that lingers beneath.

Molly Spencer is a poetry editor at The Rumpus and a lecturer at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Her work has appeared in Georgia Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares.

Contents

I.
If I tell you everything, maybe as day fades, 3
Conversation with Lace Thong and Car Keys 4
Conversation with Glass and Joist 5
Silences: snowfall 6
Grisaille | August 8
Because I want to give them more than the small, gray stone 9
Moving Day 11
Love at These Coordinates 12
Disclosures | If you are aware of any settling 13

II.
Interior with a Woman Peeling Oranges, Snapping Beans 17
There Is Only One Word for Snow, but I Want More 23
Tentative Theories 24
Elegy with Edge Effects 25
Meditation at Fishtown 26
Meadow | A Reckoning 28

III.
Night Repairs 37
Conversation with Shower and Vestibule 38
Disclosures | If you are aware of any shared features 39
Disclosures | If you are aware of any nuisance animals such as
crows, chickens, or barking dogs 40
Elegy Beginning with a Text from My Brother 42
As if life can go on as it has 44
Even so, the first bird 45
Elegy at the Strandline 47
Nocturne 48
Conversation with Distance and Shaking 49

IV.
Litany 53
Bridging 54
Meditation at Ice-Out 58

V.
Love Story 61
Disclosures | If the house is built on a hillside 63
In Southeast Lower Michigan, a Chance of Snow after Midnight 64
Vestige 65
Aubade 67
Address to the Meadow in the Dusk 68
Frank Next Door 69
Translation 71
Conversation with Windows and Green 72
How to Love the New House 74
I Talk Myself through the Facts of Each Day 75

Notes 77
Acknowledgments 81