Table of Contents
I Made in Detroit
Made in Detroit 3
The frontroom 4
Detroit, February 1943 5
Things that will never happen here again 6
Detroit fauna 7
Family vacation to Yellowstone 9
The rented lakes of my childhood 11
Thirteen 13
She held forth 14
The scent of apple cake 16
By the river of Detroit 18
The street that was 20
City bleeding 21
Mehitabel & me 23
What my mother gave me 25
Our neverending entanglement 27
Ashes in their places 29
II Ignorance biggerthan the moon
January orders 33
We have come through 35
How I gained respect for night herons 36
Remnants still visible 38
The constant exchange 40
May opens wide 42
Wisteria can pull down a house 43
June 15th, 8 p.m. 44
Hard rain and potent thunder 45
Ignorance bigger than the moon 46
Little house with no door 48
There were no mountains in Detroit [haibun] 50
But soon there will be none 51
Missing, missed 53
Death's charming face 54
The frost moon 55
December arrives like an unpaid bill 56
III The poor are no longer with us
The suicide of dolphins 61
The poor are no longer with us 63
Don't send dead flowers 65
A hundred years since the Triangle Fire 67
Ethics for Republicans 69
Another obituary 70
What it means 71
How have the mighty… 73
We know 74
The passion of a fan 76
In pieces 78
Ghosts 80
One of the expendables 82
Let's meet in a restaurant 84
My time in better dresses 85
Come fly without me 86
These bills are long unpaid 87
Hope is a long, slow thing 89
IV Working at it
The late year 93
Erev New Years 95
Head of the year 96
May the new year continue our Joy 97
Late that afternoon they come 98
N'eilah 99
The wall of cold descends 101
How she learned 103
Working at it 105
The order of the seder 106
The two cities 107
Where silence waits 109
I say Kaddish but still mourn 110
V That was Cobb Farm
Little diurnal tragedies 115
The next evolutionary step 117
That was Cobb farm 118
They meet 120
A cigarette left smoldering 121
Discovery motion 122
Sun in January 123
Little rabbit's dream song 124
Different voices, one sentence 125
Cotton's wife 126
Thai summer day 127
Insomniac prayer at 2 a.m. 128
The body in the hot tub 129
VI Looking back in utter confusion
Looking back in utter confusion 133
Why did the palace of excess have cockroaches? 135
In the Peloponnesus one April afternoon 136
The end not yet in sight 137
Loving clandestinely 139
The visible and the in- 140
What's left 142
Corner of Putnam and Pearl 143
Bang, crash over 145
Sins of omission 146
Even if we try not to let go 148
Afterward 149
The wonder of it 150
Marinade for an elderly rabbit 151
Contemplating my breasts 152
Words ha rd as stones 153
Absence wears out the heart 154
A republic of cats 155
What do they expect? 156
Decades of intimacy creating 158
We used to be close, I said 159
A wind suddenly chills you 160
Why s he frightens me 161
My sweetness, my desire 163
They come, they go in the space of a breath 164
In storms I can hear the surf a mile away 166
Acknowledgments 169
