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Index
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Reader
ALSO BY JANE MEAD
Acknowledgments
Contents
1.
The third time my mother fell
Outside her window the trees
I bring her coffee and a bun
Well, let’s see, my mother begins, LVS
In the hills above Rincon
The United States of America
And when there was nothing left
With the mediocre portraits
Remember how you wouldn’t give up
And with her impeccable posture
2.
We are lying in the big bed
Behind the filing cabinet
In animal darkness, before
I bring breakfast, balancing the tray
Hospice wants to interview the patient
Turns out Leo is one lying
Somewhere in New Mexico
The family inundates—
How will you spend your courage
The tumor on my mother’s liver
My mother says
3.
The finest strand of deep blue yarn
4.
This year I have disappeared
The hornets swarm in the diesel-filled air.
How will you spend your courage
From my mother’s cabin I hear them—
Mexico is a snake eating
When this is all over
My mother’s curled up on the big bed—
I want to press my body
The mouse behind the filing cabinet
5.
In my father’s big bed
In my father’s lab the aisles were narrow
In my dream my mother comes with me.
Yes dear—I would like some wine.
—Would you like to go to sleep now?
Is that MY black dog—
We are sitting on the side of the bed
My mother takes my two hands
Rain, and the grape sugars
Passing back to the house
At night I go for a personal best:
The finest strand of deep blue yarn—
6.
My mother’s every exhale is
On the phone, my brother Whit
+/- 3 a.m.
So we measure the morphine carefully
(My mother’s every exhale is
Ben! Oh, Ben
Now my mother’s every exhale
I myself do what I do best:
Just after seven we turned her
The life falls shut
7.
The day after my mother died
She died on her 84th birthday
—The never the over the void
Silvia asks whether I ever feel
Her ashes blow off—
Rincon, where the Rio Grande turns
And the bit about the answer
Because elsewhere in this valley
In the phone photograph
NOTES
About the Publisher
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