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.
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.
for Emily Wilson
2002–2013
in loving memory
Contents
Title Page
6 God of rooms
7 Hold the finch
8 1945
9 For love,
10 Shirt in Heaven
11 there’s nothing when
12 Peace to bad waters
13 Bardo
14 W. 13th Street
15 Open
16 A leaf, a shadow-hand
17 You rope that pulls them where they do not go
18 The helicopter,
19 When I lost my courage
20 His hand takes
21 Bury your money
22 Poem with endwords by Reginald Shepherd
23 She will be
Friend
1 [The ship] is slowly giving up her sentient life.
2 I cannot write about it.
3 Hospice
4 Isn’t there something
5 Down on the street
6 Both you & he
7 My words to you
8 I’m going to sleep
9 I’d get you a glass of champagne
10 We turn in dream
11 Are all the things
12 You’re gone
13 Then
14 You Speak
Threshold
1 Could it be heat?
2 The Window:
3 The Door:
4 Bellini, Saint Francis
5 In the Famine Museum
6 Friend,
7 Great-grandmother,
Then had we well put to, without form, without text
1 Note in winter
2 Ten Degrees
3 When I woke up, our time
4 When I woke up, my friend
5 Self-Portrait, Rembrandt, 1658
6 Song
7 Icebergs, Ilulissat
About the Author
Books by Jean Valentine
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks
Luna Moth
Luna Moth
Luna moth
at the black window
I hold you in my signal-memory
but I can’t get back to how to talk to you,
silent as the black window.
Silent as your body
little book
on which
I in my hunger wrote.
A Child’s Drawing, 1941
A woman ladder leans
with her two-year-old boy in her arms.
Her arms & legs & hands & feet
are thin as crayons.
The man ladder
is holding his glass of bourbon,
he is coming out of the child’s drawing
in