Contents

Introduction

I.Dark Was the Night / Cold Was the Ground

Refugee

Southern Gothic I

Nocturne with Horses (Another Exile)

Southern Gothic II

Blue (Southern Exiles)

Migrations (White Lilacs)

The Oddsmaker (The Little Book of Fate)

Reply to Du Mu from the South

A Charm for Protection / from the Protectors

Diptych: Self-Portrait with Hundreds of Horse Skulls (Solve for X)

Fort Worth Impromptu

II.Trouble Will Soon Be Over

Mississippi Tongues: a Poem in Nine Parts

I. Southern Divinations

II. What’s the Last Thing that Goes Through a Bug’s Head

III. Southern Locution (Erasures)

IV. Mama Jan’s Advice for This Life

V. Issaquena County Blues (Theology)

VI. Interview with the Last Blacksmith in Mississippi

VII. Natchez Trace Ecstatic

VIII. String Theory

IX. A Charm for Ghosts (Mississippi Tongues Coda)

Lost Hour Blues

Salvage

Drought Blues

Ante Up

Winter Song

Texas Blues

Southern Tongues Leave Us Shining

III.Bye & Bye I’m Going to See the King

Appalachian Vowels

Auramancy

Reliquaries

Silence

Nocturne with Fitted Absences

Appalachian Farewell

The Trick

IV.Sweeter as the Years Go By

Southern Update: Triptych

Letter to My Daughter Perhaps Someday

Nocturne &/or Aubade with Horses

V.Let Your Light Shine on Me

Southern Divinations II

How Does a Man Become a Hashtag

They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips

Prayer for This Day

Late Sestet

Let It Shine on Me

Southern Tongues Coda (Precision Dying)

Texas Blues II

Stray Paragraphs from the Year of the Rooster

Letteromancy (The New Causality)

Aubade with Horses (Fort Worth Impromptu II)