Contents
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Learning to Write
The Sound of One Fork, 1981
Cahaba
My Cousin Anne
My Mother Loves Women
Elbows
Romance
The Sound of One Fork
from The Segregated Heart
We Say We Love Each Other, 1985
Sharing the Eye
Sharp Glass
Waulking Song: Two
We Say We Love Each Other
Your Hand Opens Me
The Fact of the Garden
Reading Maps: Three
Crime Against Nature, 1990
Poem for My Sons
Justice, Come Down
Declared Not Fit
No Place
Down the Little Cahaba
All the Women Caught in Flaring Light
The Place Lost and Gone, the Place Found
A Waving Hand
from Shame
The First Question
Motionless on the Dark Side of the Light
My Life You Are Talking About
I Am Ready to Tell All I Know
In the Waiting Room at the Draft Board
from At Fifteen, the Oldest Son Comes to Visit
Talking to Charlie
The Laughing Place
Another Question
Crime Against Nature
Walking Back Up Depot Street, 1999
Walking Back Up Depot Street
Red String
Eating Clay
The Remnant Shop
New Poems
Learning to Talk
Cutting Hair
Doing Physical Therapy
Shoveling Sand
Day Off
Breakfast
Picking Up a Job Application
Getting Money at the ATM
Playing the Lottery
Giving a Manicure
Picketing the Bargain Store, They Said
Chopping Peppers