Description
Book Synopsis"Reading these poems is an uncanny experience. . . . We enter into this book alert to possibility, and leave knowing how asleep we've been."—Nick Flynn Of all the meanings of exposed I think my favorite is the raw nerve shivering bug-like in the lamp light while the surgeon arranges his dainty knives. You can get close to that. You can brush its wriggling limb and hear the scream. You can lie there on the table, say, "little nerve oh nerve it'll be all right; there there, there there.
Table of ContentsForeword by Susan Mitchell — vii 1 Adam Before the Advent of Psychiatry — 6 A Bit of Forgiveness — 7 Reading Dante in the ICU — 9 Adam Explains His Implications — 11 Adam Home from the Wars — 13 Here’s to Killing — 14 Adam Relates the Last Days of Rome — 17 Adam Explains the Origin — 18 Red Shift — 19 Adam Reports from the Distant Future — 22 2 Black Hole Owners Association — 25 Letter to Toss from the Airborne Plane — 28 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [our fathers are liars.] — 30 What I Asked For — 31 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [once I believed if I wore my sadness] — 33 On Believing the Night Has an End When the Night [...] — 34 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [once more our old wounds] — 36 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [have you been the unwinged thing] — 37 At the Optometrist’s I Almost Remember a Story […] — 38 Theory of Cruelty — 40 Lake Bobby — 41 3 TO THROW THE LITTLE BONES THAT SPEAK I. [Jack of Hearts, Jack of the weakest ventricle] — 45 II. [Let’s say the heebie-jeebies are a kind of flea] — 46 III. [My little hooked pickerels, just look] — 47 IV. [Edge of the bright earth] — 48 VI. [The last—give or take—forever I’ve spent] — 49 VII. [Ladies and gents, if you look to your left] — 50 VIII. [From a list of great evils I’ve chosen the best] — 51 IX. [Karen you promised you’d come but didn’t] — 52 4 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [please join me in compiling] — 55 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [some of us are cured] — 56 Joe Cuomo, Local Weatherman, Tests the Old Idea of Heaven — 57 About to Hope — 59 Secret Fellow Sufferers, [I’ve come a long way] — 60 Last Supper — 61 Notes Toward Basic Betterness — 64
