Table of Contents
I Have Lived My Whole Life in a Painting Called Paradise 1
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Girl in a Picture Frame 5
Memory Fed Me until It Didn't 6
Still Life with Self-Portrait 8
Young Hare 10
Still Life with Turkey 12
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Eden: An Outline 17
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Self-Portrait: My Legs 23
Self-Portrait with the Ashes of My Baby Blanket 24
Self-Portrait with My Dead Looming behind Me 25
Self-Portrait with Double Helix 26
Self-Portrait with Levitation 27
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Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl 33
The Knight's Dream 34
Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber 35
The Last Still Life: The Head of Medusa 36
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Walmart Parking Lot 39
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American Still Lifes (the Gothic Sublime in 102 Syllables) 47
Sentences 48
Hindenburg 50
There's Some I Just Won't Let Die 51
Bowl 52
American Run-On Sentences 53
I Look at My Face in a Red Mylar Balloon Tied to a Mailbox 54
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Stateline Pastoral 57
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The Hand Has Dropped the Fruit and It's Painted Where It Falls 65
I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses 66
Silence Is So Accurate, Rothko Wrote 67
It Seems at Times That Silence 68
Still Life with Dictator 69
The Heroic Penetrates the Quotidian 71
Silence Again 72
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Memento Mori 75
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Self-Portrait with Herbarium 81
Self-Portrait with Emily Dickinson (Rebirth of Mourning) 83
Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath's Braid 84
Self-Portrait under Janis's Shoe When She Sang "Ball and Chain" at Monterey Pop, 1967 85
Self-Portrait with Freddie M (Invention of Thunder) 86
Self-Portrait with Amy (Creation Myth) 87
Self-Portrait as Mouthpiece of an Anonymous Benefactor 88
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Two Floor Mosaics 93
Passover Lamb 95
What Could Be More Beautiful Than Fede Galizia's Cherries? 96
Woman Looking at a Table 97
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I Climbed Out of the Painting Called Paradise 101
Notes 105
Acknowledgments 107