Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents vii
3. I Fall Risk
4. [Mine eyes dry … cannot see have] 3
5. “Corpses Like Night Soil / Get Carted Off” 4
6. It was a Common Night 5
7. Household Tales 7
8. Morrow, Morrow, Valentine 8
9. Witchspeak 9
10. Burn Permit 10
11. Burnt Offering 12
12. Fall Risk 13
13. Coming, Mama, to Carry 14
14. Recurrence 15
15. The Palace 17
16. “In the Old Time, They Used to Putt a Penny in the Dead Persons Mouth” 19
17. The Child Breaks a Glass of Milk 20
18. II Ordinary Time
19. “In Your Absence There Are No Mortal Banquets.” 23
20. Measure of Ordinary Time 29
21. For My Mother Whose Mother is Ill 30
22. “Let the Quick Then Cast Forth the Dead” 32
23. Blood Lines 33
24. “She Died — This Was The Way She Died.” 34
25. Primer 36
26. III Night Burial
27. [Quiet … you are not among the] 39
28. [Look upon your servant] 40
29. [Thanksgiving I sat with her] 41
30. [fled to the woods] 42
31. [My other grandmother has stopped sewing.] 43
32. [After the rains a path of needles,] 44
33. [Just wear it] 45
34. [How to know someone is dying? Check their feet for mottling.] 46
35. [In the opera, Manon speaks] 47
36. [Keen … cry out for the] 48
37. [My husband holds my hand] 49
38. [My mother fell into a sleep] 50
39. [For one minute] 51
40. [She left the room … she stopped breathing] 52
41. [Enter Mary] 53
42. [Daughters sing from the backseat] 54
43. [On foot my daughters aim stiff-arms, a Stop!] 55
44. [Give me haint blue inside of which] 56
45. [When she came home] 57
46. [I am mad at you] 58
47. [You, she, we, I can’t,] 59
48. [Night burial, a winter sky, a winter ground] 60
49. [You lie here do] 61
50. [An ancient loop—someone] 62
51. [Your mother dies.] 63
52. IV The Former Object of My Everything
53. “For this Daie Your Daughter Hathe Bene Bo the Alive and Deade” 67
54. Transcendental Étude 68
55. Gallery 69
56. Primer 71
57. To Lay Sod on a Grave 73
58. The Former Object of My Everything 74
59. Notes 75
60. Acknowledgements 77