Contents
The Pearl
I
The Door Flies Open
Nocturnal
This Time We'll Go to Kentucky Fried Chicken
Coney Island, 1977
The Blue Dress with the Daisies
We Move to a House Where He Never Lived
The Goose Girl
Penny Poker
May 18, 1980
When She Married Him
"A Woman Was Raped Here"
Cecilia
After the Hysterectomy
Elegy with Carousel and Doorknob
Cefalu
Ars Poetica
II
The Deaf Girls
Hide and Seek
Donut Parade
Flight
Muddy Waters
Mr. Birdsell, Room 108
Even Though I Know the Door to Our Compartment Won't Lock
Salt of the Earth
Wyoming
Seatac
In Paris Women Walk in the Dark
July
The Big Dipper
Menlo
The Flower Horses
Paper Clothes
Watching Oksana
III
Merge
Instructions for My Mother's Funeral
Long Distance
You Flew across the Map
For the Bible Tells Me So
Something about Winning
Community College
'The Little Mermaid', the Long Version
For Matthew, Who Doesn't Love the Sea
The House on the North Stevens
How to Be Sad
At the Chicago Art Institute, My Mother Tells Me to Write a Poem about Jeanette
About a Baby
Trying to Contact Neil Diamond
Acknowledgments