Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents vii
3. I
4. Blizzard Sweat 3
5. Having Drunk Two-Thirds of a Bottle of Riesling during Her Office Hours, Professor Adler Lectures on the Venus of Willendorf 5
6. Our Currency of Air 6
7. The Young Painter Rejects Eakins' Gross Clinic, 1875 9
8. Aubade for Sesame Street at 3:27 a.m. Ending with a Line from Snyder 11
9. New Flag 12
10. Death March from the Siege of Kut, 1916 13
11. Sometimes, at Seven 14
12. A Medici Servant Recounts Leo X's Coronation 15
13. Cento from the Church of the Nazarene's Advent Marquee . 17
14. William Tecumseh Sherman Speaks on the Burning of Old Sheldon Church, South Carolina, 1865 18
15. How Her Pearls 20
16. II
17. On Certain Theories of Capitalism 23
18. Fever Dream in which Anne Sexton Is My Mother Begging for Her Job at the Sunshine Supermart after Her Third Reprimand for Tardiness 25
19. From Her Deathbed Harriet Bailey Chronicles the Fifth and Final Trek to Her Son Frederick Douglass 27
20. The Rocket 29
21. Witness 483: Phoenix Lights Incident, 1997 31
22. Dry Lightning 33
23. The Great Disappointment 35
24. Charles Altamont Doyle Writes to His Son Arthur Conan from the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, 1888 37
25. The Fever Room 38
26. What Creature 40
27. Into the Primitive 41
28. Ananogmius within the Body Cavity of Xiphactinus 43
29. III
30. The Redskins Logo's Soliloquy 47
31. Still Life with Denver Broncos Duffel Bag, 1989 48
32. Marlboro Purslane 49
33. Erasure: Tattered Copy of Ezra Jack Keats' Whistle for Willie Discharged by the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs' Preschool Lending Library 51
34. The Clay Is Vile Beneath Our Feet 52
35. Widow's Lament 53
36. At Sixty Weeks 55
37. On Certain Theories of Guitar 57
38. The Throat an Open Grave 60
39. Delirium Tremens: Keith Moon at Laguna Beach, 1978 61
40. On a Photograph of Jeffers with His Granddaughter Una, Carmel, 1953 62
41. Joseph's Apocrypha 64
42. IV
43. Ode to Noah Caterpillar Jackson, 1807-1888 67
44. Two Mosquitoes 70
45. The Birth of Things to Come 71
46. Recital with Tenebrae 72
47. Seven Post-It Notes for the Philosophy Department's New Work-Study Aide 73
48. Gut Shot, Alifair McCoy Prays to Wisps of Floccus 75
49. Target Practice 76
50. A Surrogate Suicide Note for Carol Frost Written with a Murder of Shaftsbury Crows 77
51. The Wolfman's Confession to the Salisbury Police Department 78
52. Ghazal for Toadspawn 80
53. Plash & Levitation 81
54. Acknowledgments 83