Table of Contents
Foreword Jacqueline Woodson xi
Preface Staceyann Chin 1
Crossfire
Crossfire 9
Common Truths, Or: Why I Love My Pussy 12
Nails 17
Love 19
My Jamaica 22
Tweet This, Motherfucker 25
In Response to Danish 29
Letter to My Father 32
Jamaicans in New York 35
Know When to Fold 38
Song of Survival 42
Litany of Desire 45
Supplication 48
On Jumping Off Ledges 49
Traveling 52
Passing 54
September in New York 57
Take Back the Night
Tsunami Rising 63
Not My President 69
Open Letter to the Media 74
Letter to the Remaining Aborigines in Australia 77
Take Back the Night 80
Words Like RAPE 85
Midnight-Morning 88
On Becoming Thirty 90
Speech Delivered in Chicago at 2006 Gay Games 93
Catalogue the Insanity 97
Lesbian Chasing Straight 100
White Noise 103
First Green 105
Fall Snaking 106
Some of the Things I Believe 108
On Prop 8 and Being in Jamaica 110
One Question 115
In Those Years
Bernice Perry: The Details 121
Haiku for My Mother 124
In Those Years 125
My Grandmother's Tongue 128
Feeling Unfamiliar 130
Neighbors: For Centuries 133
Elsewhere 136
War Games 138
Love
Women of Color 143
Catching Myself 149
Zuri-Siale Samanya 155
For You 157
Raise the Roof 162
Why I Be Writing You Poems 167
Fast as I Need to 171
Elegy for Peter of the Earth 174
Muted Gratitude: For Tracy Chapman 178
Trini Girl 181
Inaugural Praise Song 183
I Have Never Known What We Are 185
What We Long For 188
Fuck What You Heard About Falling 193
Race to the Water 198
Long Distance Love 200
Acknowledgments 205
