Many thanks to the editors of the journals and publications where these poems have previously appeared: The 3288 Review, “Nosferatu Exits the Garden State Parkway to Gas Up at the Wawa in Barnegat”; 2River, “Astonished Man” (previously titled “The Death of Chance Locke”); Able Muse, “1975”; The American Journal of Poetry, “Jim Morrison & The Doors in Miami, 1969,” “White Cane Lying in the Gutter in the Lane”; Appalachian Heritage, “Black Radio”; The Atticus Review, “Robert Plant Holding a Dove that Flew into His Hands, circa 1973,” “Dressing after Sex”; The Baltimore Review, “One Wench in the House between Them,” “O, Kindergarten”; Bayou Magazine, “The Nascent Soul Selects a Set of Appalachian Parents”; Big Muddy, A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, “Live Nudes”; Blackbird, “Death at the Lakeshore”; Bluestem, “And the Blood Came Trickling Down”; Chicago Quarterly Review, “Byron and Shelley, Maintaining,” “Beautiful Ohio”; The Chiron Review, “Jeff Goldblum in The Fly”; The Citron Review, “Lee in the Orchard, 1865”; Cleaver Magazine, “The Color Yellow, Love, the Fall of Leaves in Autumn”; Cream City Review, “G”; december, “And the World All Leaves and Morning Air”; Evening Street Review, “God Shows Up in Iowa”; Fifth Wednesday Journal, “Einstein and Chaplin at the Movies”; Florida English, “The Dark Knight, On His Day Off”; The Florida Review, “Watching the Night Approach of Tropical Storm Rita,” “The Fury of a Patient Man”; Free State Review, “God’s Circus at Its Wintering Grounds in Florida,” “When Billie Holiday Sings about Southern Trees”; JMWW, “The Pop-up Book of Falling in Love,” “Truck Picture, 1962,” “Herons, in April in Ohio,” “With the Lights of Houses Flashing By in the Darkness”; The Journal, “You Must Drive This Car”; The Louisville Review, “Whatever Else, This Memory Resembles a Dance”; Magnolia, “The Last Man on Earth Takes a Walk in Jupiter, Florida,” “Dixie Highway”; The Main Street Rag, “The Lives of My Poems after I’m Gone”; Moon City Review, “WD8RBB”; North American Review, “Puberty”; nthposition, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”; New Works Review, “Leaving the Regal Jupiter 18 Cinema Singing . . .”; Off the Coast, “American Christian,” “The Mountain Elvises Get Ready for Talent Night”; One, “Transcendence”; Orange Coast Review, “A Palestinian Boy Looks through the Rubble inside His Home in a Refugee Camp near Tyre,” “Jack Johnson Returns to His America to Eat Cold Eels and Think Distant Thoughts”; Poydras Review, At the Wheel of the Pilar, Ernest Hemingway Addresses the Breezes off the Coast of Cuba; Rappahannock Review, “How Not to Spell Gymnasium”; Rattle, “Ringo Starr Answers Questions on Larry King Live about the Death of George Harrison”; Shenandoah, “Nosferatu in Florida”; Soundings Review, “25 Astonishing Things to Do with a Pocket Handkerchief,” “Our Local Heavens”; Southern Ohio Anthology, “Far”; The Southern Review, “Saturday Afternoon at the Midland Theatre in Newark, Ohio”; Spoon River Poetry Review, “Hellhound”; Steinbeck Now, “James Dean Kissing Julie Harris in East of Eden,” “Fitzgerald and Zelda, February, 1921”; Tampa Review, “Unicyclist with UM Umbrella”; Tar River Poetry, “Mexican Clowns Deny Costume Killer of Drug Trafficking Boss Belonged to Their Profession,” “The Days of Miracle and Wonder”; Texas Review, “The Silence of the Belt When It Is Not Striking the Child”; The Tishman Review, “Walking with Eve in the Loved City”; UCity Review, “The Force of Right Words,” “Night Migration”; Valparaiso Poetry Review, “My Father’s Love Letters,” “Rimbaud Dying”; What Rough Beast, “America as Ex.”
I’m grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Also, to Okla Elliott and Hannah Stephenson for including “Saturday Afternoon at the Midland Theatre in Newark, Ohio” in New Poetry from the Midwest 2014 (Milwaukee, WI/Urbana, IL: New American Press, 2015). Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics published a chapbook called “Saturday Afternoon at the Midland Theatre in Newark, Ohio” drawn from the pages of this collection.
This book is for Sherry Bentley.