"I" : new and selected poems
(Book)

After all those years of fear and raging in my poems -- After the Gwendolyn Brooks reading -- Among school children -- As my writing changes I think with sorrow of those who couldn't change -- Biographia literaria Africana -- Blessed angels -- Elegy for my husband -- The enthusiast -- The exchange -- Gifts from the dead -- Glimpse. Black woman as magician at CVS ; The most surprising and necessary ingredient in my mother's spaghetti sauce ; Bad dad ; Glimpse -- I count on you invisible -- I give in to an old desire -- The intimates. The intimates ; On a woman who excuses herself from the table, even in restaurants, to brush her teeth ; Homage -- Jerry Stern's friendship -- La fille aux cheveux de lin -- Lauds -- Midnight : long train passing -- My father in old age -- A nap -- New Orleans palmetto bug. 1. False gods ; 2. Why the giant palmetto bugs in New Orleans run toward you when you are screaming at them to go away -- Note -- Pantoum for the broken -- The peaches of August -- The permission -- The proof -- Rereading Jerry Stern -- Sex in old age -- Streaming -- Summer evening at Still Point -- Telly redux : Sharon asks me to send a picture of little fishie Telly -- Watching a roach give birth on YouTube, I think of Lucille Clifton meeting God -- "What are you?" -- sleeping with mr. death -- the story of a very broken lady -- the mirror poems -- the face/as it must be/of love -- doll poem -- new lady godiva -- The grandmother poems. The empress of the death house ; The feeding ; The funeral parade -- from a group of poems thinking about Anne Sexton on the anniversary of her death -- unburying the bird -- Introduction : writing natural birth -- november -- holy cross hospital -- maternity -- 10:29 -- transition -- delivery -- in knowledge of young boys --

The minks

Blackbottom

Christmas Eve : my mother dressing

St. Peter Claver

The weakness

Fires in childhood

High school

Hamtramck : the Polish women

The struggle

Before making love

On stopping late in the afternoon for steamed dumplings

Stuck

Squeaky bed

The good old dog

The promise

For a man who speaks with birds

Touching/not touching : my mother

My father still sleeping after surgery

Boy at the Paterson Falls

Fears of the eighth grade

The furious boy

In an urban school

The polishers of brass

For the dishwasher at Boothman's

Plaid pants

Books

Allen Ginsberg

On the turning up of unidentified black female corpses

A note on my son's face

Preface

Tender

Exits from Elmina Castle : Cape Coast, Ghana. The journey ; The tour ; Tourists' lunch ; Beneath Elmina ; Above Elmina ; Slavery ; Power ; Market

When my father was beating me

Black boys play the classics

Brother

Family secrets

After a reading at a black college

Four black women who are afraid

Passing

Bookstore

Invisible dreams

Two poems. Peripheral ; Bird

1:30 A.M.

Dead baby speaks

The origins of the artist : Natalie Cole

From a letter : about snow

Not forgotten

Grace Paley reading

Clitoris

Preface to The undertaker's daughter and apology to the reader

I am not afraid to be memoir

Beds

The undertaker's daughter

Sunday afternoon at Claire Carlyle's

Dolls

Mistrust of the beloved

I see my father after his death

Mydad & sardines

The new pet

The Telly cycle. For Telly the fish ; Special ears : Another poem of a small grieving for my fish Telly ; On the reasons I loved Telly the fish ; Because I was good to Telly in his life, ; An apology to Telly the revolutionary

When the goddess makes love to me,

Untitled

The night I stopped singing Billie Holiday

When I touched her

A little prayer to our lady

Cherry blossoms

The exigencies of form

The undertaking.