CONTENTS
FROM
The Arrival of the Future
(1985)
The Woman at the Laundromat Crying “Mercy”
The Men
The Robinson Hotel (from Kansas Avenue)
Flight
Angels
Groceries
Night Shift
Hair
To My Friend
The Limits of My Language: English 85B
Late Game
FROM
Local Knowledge
(1991)
In Czechoslovakia
In a Café near Tuba City, Arizona, Beating My Head against a Cigarette Machine
Language, Nonsense, Desire
There Is Constant Movement in My Head
Maize
In Another Life I Encounter My Father
The Machinist, Teaching His Daughter to Play the Piano
The Doppler Effect
Toban’s Precision Machine Shop
Speaking the Names
Local Knowledge
Kansas
The Soliloquy of the Appliance Repairman
Work
L’Attente
FROM
The Art of the Lathe
(1998)
Beauty
The Invisible Man
All the People in Hopper’s Paintings
The Book of Hours
Cigarettes
The Himalayas
Body and Soul
Airlifting Horses
Old Men Playing Basketball
Old Women
Song
Thermoregulation in Winter Moths
Keats
The Ascension of Ira Campbell
The Dumka
A Model of Downtown Los Angeles, 1940
The Children
Little Boy
The Welder, Visited by the Angel of Mercy
The Death of a Small Town
The Art of the Lathe
FROM
Early Occult Memory Systems
of the Lower Midwest
(2003)
Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
Moses Yellowhorse Is Throwing Water Balloons from the Hotel Roosevelt
Mrs. Hill
The Potato Eaters
Hearing Parker the First Time
Delivering Eggs to the Girls’ Dorm
Rave On
A Photograph of the Titanic
Blood Rain
The Death of a Psychic
Luck
A Roman Grave
On the Passing of Jesus Freaks from the College Classroom
Brazil
Weather Report
The Second Annual Wizard of Oz Reunion in Liberal, Kansas
The Blue Buick
Mlle Pym (from Three Poems by Roy Eldridge Garcia)
The Deposition
A Starlit Night
Motion Sickness
A Wall Map of Paris
At the Café de Flore
At Omaha Beach
The Memory Palace
FROM
Usher
(2009)
The Gray Man
Trilogy
Frieda Pushnik
Usher
Hart Crane in Havana
Key to “Hart Crane in Havana”
The Cottonwood Lounge
Les Passages
Wittgenstein, Dying
The Barber
Hume
Gödel
from The Beauty of Abandoned Towns
1. The Beauty of Abandoned Towns
2. Bloom School
3. The Teller
4. Wheat
Madonna and Child, Perryton, Texas, 1967
What He Said
from Five Prose Poems from the Journals of Roy Eldridge Garcia
Cendrars
Piano
Moth
Triptych: Nathan Gold, Maria, On the Waterfront
Nathan Gold
Maria
On the Waterfront
New Poems
The Story
Red Snow
The Left Fielder’s Sestina
Betty
The Game
The Student Assistant
History: Four Poems
1. Dust Storm, No Man’s Land, 1952
2. Shakespeare in the Park, 9/11/2011
3. Economics
4. Alzheimer’s
Three Girls Tossing Rings
The Death of a Gerbil
Pale from the Hand of the Child That Holds It
Three Prose Poems from the Journals of Roy Eldridge Garcia
An Attaché Case
The End of Art
The Language of the Future
Language
Abandoned Grain Elevator
The Men on Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, 1975
Getting Fired
On the Death of Small Towns: A Found Poem
Leaving
Swan Lake
Obed Theodore Swearingen, 1883–1967
Rothko
A House
Poem (from Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest)
Poem
Notes
Acknowledgments