Note to the Reader
Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque eu
Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.
When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.
Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.
This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.
I love you. All your concerns are as important to me as my own. For many dear, beautiful reasons I wish to make you happy.
Contents
The Lyric “I” Drives to Pick Up Her Children from School: A Poem in the Postconfessional Mode
The Late Repentant (Antepurgatory)
SONNET (stopped)
Complaint
Late-Night Poemcall
Cho(o)se Love
Threshold
Not This
I Had a Ski-Masked Rapist in My House
Commentary
Lime Tree Bower
SONNET (silenced)
Fragmentary
Kafka and Milena About to Meet in Vienna
Threshold
Alaska Aubade (Winter)
The Poem She Didn’t Write
2
Fragmentary
SONNET (falling objects)
(And More)
SONNET (motion)
Francesca Says More
“House” Is Being Cleared
Fragmentary
Just Now
Alaska Aubade (Summer)
Sight Unseen
SONNET (division)
To an Italian Ceiling
Mean and Manly and Meant
Fragmentary
Francesca Says Too Much
Francesca Can Too Stop Thinking about Sex, Reflect upon Her Position in Poetry, Write a Real Sonnet
Look at Lesbia Now!
It Is to Have or Nothing
SONNET (seized)
My Lover Asks Me to Consider
My Love Sent Me a List
Fragmentary
You Are Who
Once the Beauty Abishag
ALLOVER POEM
Least Said
Methow 19:19
Intempestive
Orpheus and Eurydice (2005)
Procession
Clearer Brighter Lighted Now
Neither Snow Shovel nor Hoe
Lyana Sick and Next to Her
My Geranium
Fragmentary
Show Up
Hello Poem
SONNET (full-court press)
Threshold
Note(s)
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1
Summer Fiction
My fancies fluttered round the same images
like martins round a bell tower at dawn.
I checked my e-mails, then, I checked them again:
lariat sweep and stallion glow.
Some one hour’s experience for which we
stubbornly subornatively return:
a dalliance at an execution.
Everything reduced to occasion
but