I would like to thank the editors of the following publications in which these poems first appeared, often in different versions:
Broadsided Press: “Pepsi” (excerpt);
Cave Wall: “For My Grandmother’s Feet, Swollen Again,” “The Dead”;
Central Arkansas Broadside Project: “Dixie Highway” (excerpt);
The Cortland Review: “A Translation for the Spiritual Mediator Who May Speak for Me to Frances Lee Cox, Wherever She May Be”;
Ellipses: “To My Grandmother’s Ghost, Flying with Me on a Plane,” “Pheno”;
Iron Horse Literary Review: “EPO,” “Fanny Says at Twenty-three She Learned to Drive,” “For My Grandmother’s Teeth, Pulled When She Was Thirty-six”;
JMWW: “Go Put on Your Face,” “Your Monthly”;
The Literary Review: “Crisco”;
Los Angeles Review: “My Book, in Birds”;
The Oxford American: “Fuck”;
San Pedro Review: “A Prayer for the Self-Made Man”;
storySouth: “Fanny Says How to Be a Lady,” “Sweet Silver”;
Tahoma Literary Review: “A Genealogy of the Word”;
Waccamaw: “Hettie,” “Pepsi”;
The Wide Shore: “Clorox.”
“For My Grandmother’s Perfume, Norell” and “Fanny Linguistics: Nickole” were selected by the Academy of American Poets for their Poem-A-Day Project, and a nascent version of “Sweet Silver” appeared in Wingbeats, a craft anthology published by Dos Gatos Press in 2012. A version of “My Book, in Birds” won A Room of One’s Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Poetry in 2010, and Cornelius Eady chose “Clorox” as the winner of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod Poetry Competition in 2013.
Quotations are from the following sources:
Allison, Dorothy. Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Baldwin, James. “Stranger in the Village,” Notes of a Native Son, New York: Beacon Press, 1955.
Moore, Marianne. “What Are Years?”, What Are Years. New York: Macmillan, 1941.
O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
I am indebted to my family for their support of this book, in particular my mother who gave me courage (who always gives me courage)—these stories here are not entirely mine to tell, but she lent me strength to put them to the page. I also want to thank her sister, my Aunt Toni, who, after reading the manuscript, called to say I did right by her mother’s story. She’s not one to hesitate to say exactly what she thinks, so although I know there is much I missed and perhaps got wrong, I take her at word. I would not have published these poems without their blessing. I would also like to dedicate this book, in part, to Ethel Pearl Graham, who helped raise me, and to the memory of my cousin, Eric Cox, who died tragically and too young.
I thank the late Kurt Brown and his wife Laure-Anne Bosselaar, my sweetest friend and best damn teacher I’ve ever had; and thanks to my longtime pal Raymond McDaniel who dished out some solid editorial (and life) advice when I needed it; and my dear friend, Nicole Pollitt, whose own mama could rival Fanny in just about anything. I also thank my little sisters Hope and Rachel, who help me remember, always (and took care to remind me that Fanny let them both try cigarettes before the age of ten). In addition, I extend gratitude to the many friends who’ve helped me these past ten years as this book took shape: Lisa Hunt, who leans into the world with a strength and kindness given to her by her own coffee-swigging granny; Leslie Wilson, who knows what it is to love a fierce grandmother fiercely; Travis Carmack, who still laughs with me over these old stories; Pee Wee Watson, who bought me airline tickets to visit Fanny those last few weeks of her life when I didn’t have a dime to my name; Patricia Smith, who helped me navigate my most difficult poem in this book; Rebecca Gayle Howell, who always brings me back to my Kentucky home.
I also thank those that generously gave me a place to hide away and write: Katie Mead and Robert Alexander, for time and space in your cabin in almost-Canada, Michigan (“Fanny Linguistics: Thaumatology” is for you); Doug Melkovitz and Lee Fleming, for offering me your sweet cabin in way-out-where-no-one-will-find-me Arkansas; Dennis Maloney and Elaine LaMattina, for surrounding me with the beauty of Big Sur, a place so sacred I didn’t dare waste a day. I’d also like to thank the English Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, in particular Dean Deborah Baldwin and Trey Philpotts for the summer research grants that gave me time to revise these poems, and especially David Jauss, my colleague and longtime mentor. I also want to give a nod to my phenomenal gaggle of students—at UALR, Murray State, and Sewanee—for tolerating the fact that Fanny seems to boss her way into nearly every workshop I teach. I’d also like to mention Eloise Klein Healy: though you lost your words a few years ago, I know you’ll recover. In the meantime, I still hear you talking to me, giving me the best advice an Arktoi bear could want.
I’d like to thank three organizations: First, the National Endowment for the Arts, because with their support, I was able to make the changes in my life that led to the completion of this book. Secondly, the Kentucky Foundation for Women—years ago, they lent me the encouragement to write down my grandmother’s stories while I still had her, and it’s no understatement to say that without their generosity, these poems would not exist. Finally, BOA Editions: Peter Conners, you convinced me to send you this manuscript, and it wasn’t but a few months later that you wrote me about your own grandmother Bema, then sent me a contract. I can’t quite believe my luck knowing you in this world. Sandy Knight, your design crafted a sweet cover in Fanny’s color. Jenna Fisher and Melissa Hall, you two make a firecracker of a team up there in Rochester with Peter, and I can’t thank you enough for your hard work. It’s not easy birthing collections of poetry into the stream of books published each year, I know. You can always count on me for chocolates around Christmastime.
Finally, Jessica Jacobs—my reader, my witness, my wife. You’ve read these poems more times than anyone and, still, you believe in them. Your faith and love are a miracle.