Table of Contents
Foreword Mark Doty vii
Acknowledgments ix
I.
I Promised Her My Hands Wouldn't Get Any Larger 3
Split It Open Just to Count the Pieces 4
Make Believe 5
Queer Facts about Vegetables 7
Outing, Iowa 8
The Doctor Told Me the Shots Would Make Me Spin Silk 9
Prelude 10
The Manliest Mattress 12
Call Her Vincent 13
The No Shame Theatre 14
Blue Boy 15
Patrón 18
II
Wagon Jack 33
No Billboards in Vermont 35
Precipice 37
Larynx 38
Sunflower 39
Cooperative 40
Kindness Not for Anything 41
Love and the Bodega 42
At the Chalkboard 43
Thanks for Everything, Leland Cooper 44
The Woodlot 46
Extremophilia 47
Provincetown 48
III
The Spectral Wilderness 51
Caper in Which We Masquerade as Braver Than We Feel 52
The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart 53
Second Winter 55
Inventory 56
In the Barber Shop 58
I Think I Can Finally Hear John Muir 60
This Wolf Is Going to Swim Someday 61
The Index of Everything Round 62
Ghost Dog 64
Take Care 70
Notes 72