Contents
I.
Blizzard Sweat
Having Drunk Two-Thirds of a Bottle of Riesling during Her Office Hours, Professor Adler Lectures on the Venus of Willendorf
Our Currency of Air
The Young Painter Rejects Eakins’ Gross Clinic, 1875
Aubade for Sesame Street at 3:27 a.m. Ending with a Line from Snyder
New Flag
Death March from the Siege of Kut, 1916
Sometimes, at Seven
A Medici Servant Recounts Leo X’s Coronation
Cento from the Church of the Nazarene’s Advent Marquee
William Tecumseh Sherman Speaks on the Burning of Old Sheldon Church, South Carolina, 1865
How Her Pearls
II.
On Certain Theories of Capitalism
Fever Dream in which Anne Sexton Is My Mother Begging for Her Job at the Sunshine Supermart after Her Third Reprimand for Tardiness
From Her Deathbed Harriet Bailey Chronicles the Fifth and Final Trek to Her Son Frederick Douglass
The Rocket
Witness 483: Phoenix Lights Incident, 1997
Dry Lightning
The Great Disappointment
Charles Altamont Doyle Writes to His Son Arthur Conan from the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, 1888
The Fever Room
What Creature
Into the Primitive
Ananogmius within the Body Cavity of Xiphactinus
III.
The Redskins Logo’s Soliloquy
Still Life with Denver Broncos Duffel Bag, 1989
Marlboro Purslane
Erasure: Tattered Copy of Ezra Jack Keats’ Whistle for Willie Discharged by the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs’ Preschool Lending Library
The Clay Is Vile Beneath Our Feet
Widow’s Lament
At Sixty Weeks
On Certain Theories of Guitar
The Throat an Open Grave
Delirium Tremens: Keith Moon at Laguna Beach, 1978
On a Photograph of Jeffers with His Granddaughter Una, Carmel, 1953
Joseph’s Apocrypha
IV.
Ode to Noah Caterpillar Jackson, 1807–1880
Two Mosquitoes
The Birth of Things to Come
Recital with Tenebrae
Seven Post-It Notes for the Philosophy Department’s New Work-Study Aide
Gut Shot, Alifair McCoy Prays to Wisps of Floccus
Target Practice
A Surrogate Suicide Note for Carol Frost Written with a Murder of Shaftsbury Crows
The Wolfman’s Confession to the Salisbury Police Department
Ghazal for Toadspawn
Plash & Levitation
Acknowledgments