Table of Contents
Preface to the New and Selected Poems
Speculations about "I" xvii
After all those years of fear and raging in my poems 5
After the Gwendolyn Brooks reading 8
Among school children 9
As my writing changes I think with sorrow of those who couldn't change 11
Biographia Literaria Africana 12
Blessed angels 13
Elegy for my husband 14
The enthusiast 15
The exchange 16
Gifts from the dead 17
Glimpse
Black woman as Magician at CVS 19
The most surprising and necessary ingredient hi my mother's spaghetti sauce 19
Bad Dad 19
Glimpse 20
I count on you invisible 21
I give in to an old desire 22
The intimates
The intimates 24
On a woman who excuses herself from the table, even in restaurants, to brush her teeth 24
Homage 25
Jerry Stern's friendship 26
La fille aux cheveux de lin 27
Lauds 28
Midnight: Long Train Passing 29
My father in old age 30
A nap 31
New Orleans palmetto bug
1 False Gods 32
2 Why the giant palmetto bugs in New Orleans run toward you when you are screaming at them to go away 33
Note 34
Pantoum for the Broken 35
The Peaches of August 36
The permission 37
The proof 40
Rereading Jerry Stern 44
Sex in old age 45
Streaming 46
Summer evening at Still Point 47
Telly redux: Sharon asks me to send a picture of little fishie Telly 48
Watching a roach give birth on YouTube, I think of Lucille Clifton meeting God 49
"What are you?" 52
The Empress of the Death House
Sleeping with mr. death 59
The story of a very broken lady 60
The mirror poems 63
The face/as it must be/of love 69
Doll poem 70
New lady godiva 72
The Grandmother Poems
The Empress of the Death House 73
The Feeding 75
The Funeral Parade 77
From a group of poems thinking about Anne Sexton on the anniversary of her death 78
Unburying the bird 80
Natural Birth
Introduction: Writing Natural Birth 85
November 88
Holy cross hospital 92
Maternity 97
10:29 98
Transition 104
Delivery 110
In knowledge of young boys 122
Captivity
The Minks 125
Blackbottom 127
Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing 128
St. Peter Claver 130
The Weakness 131
Fires in Childhood 133
High School 136
Hamtramck: The Polish Women 137
The Struggle 138
Before Making Love 139
On Stopping Late in the Afternoon for Steamed Dumplings 140
Stuck 141
Squeaky Bed 142
The Good Old Dog 143
The Promise 144
For a Man Who Speaks with Birds 146
Touching/Not Touching: My Mother 147
My Father Still Sleeping after Surgery 149
Boy at the Paterson Falls 150
Fears of the Eighth Grade 151
The Furious Boy 152
In an Urban School 153
The Polishers of Brass 154
For the Dishwasher at Boothman's 155
Plaid Pants 156
Books 157
Allen Ginsberg 158
On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses 160
A Note on My Son's Face 162
Tender
Preface 169
Tender 171
Exits from Eimina Castle: Cape Coast, Ghana
The Journey 173
The Tour 174
Tourists' Lunch 174
Beneath Eimina 175
Above Eimina 176
Slavery 176
Power 177
Market 178
When My Father Was Beating Me 179
Black Boys Play the Classics 181
Brother 182
Family Secrets 183
After a Reading at a Black College 184
For Black Women Who Are Afraid 185
Passing 186
Bookstore 188
Invisible Dreams 189
Two Poems
Peripheral 193
Bird 193
1:30 A.M. 194
Dead Baby Speaks 198
The Origins of the Artist: Natalie Cole 205
From a Letter: About Snow 206
Not Forgotten 207
Grace Paley Reading 208
Clitoris 209
The Undertaker's Daughter
Preface to The Undertaker's Daughter An apology to the reader 213
Part I The Undertaker's Daughter
I am not afraid to be memoir 217
Beds 218
The undertaker's daughter 237
Sunday afternoon at Claire Carlyle's 239
Dolls 241
Mistrust of the beloved 252
Part II A Memory of the Future
I see my father after his death 255
My dad & sardines 258
The new pet 260
The Telly Cycle 261
For Telly the fish 262
Special ears 264
Another poem of a small grieving for my fish Telly 265
On the reasons I loved Telly the fish 267
Because I was good to Telly in his life 271
An apology to Telly the revolutionary 273
When the goddess makes love to me, 275
Untitled 276
The night I stopped singing like Billie Holiday 277
When I touched her 283
A little prayer to Our Lady 284
Cherry blossoms 285
Part III The Undertaking
The exigencies of form 289
The undertaking 290
Acknowledgments 297
