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Contents
*
Your World Is Harder than Mine: Instructions for Children Heading
Off to School 3
Instructions for Our Children, Living among Internet Enemies 4
Today—Bored, Puckered, Lonesome—I Would Like to Order a
Russian Internet Bride: A Trisonetto 5
The Sonetto of Accidental Inventions 7
This Deathy World 8
Poem to Your Wound 9
A Double Sonetto for Pyloric Stenosis 11
Claustrophobia: The Closet’s Perspective 13
Agoraphobia: The Great Outdoors’ Perspective 14
Taxidermy: A Translucent Love Poem 15
Lice: A Mother-Daughter Love Poem 17
A Fibrous Asbestos Sonetto 18
Today, I Turn to Stretch Armstrong for Comfort 19
Sermon on the Mount Today at My Failing Kmart:
A Broken Sonetto 21
After Having Sex on Palm Sunday, Some Clarity 22
My Enemy, Unloved, Has Only Struck One of My Cheeks:
An Interrupted Sonetto 23
I Consider Doubting Thomas at Pet Kare in a Sonetto and
a Half 24
Envy the Atheist in Sonetto 25
I Am Not in the Wilderness but at Home, Weak and Thankless in
Double Sonetto 26
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To My Lover, concerning the Yird-Swine 31
Today, Worn and Broke’t, I Make Demands of My Lover 32
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For Furious Nursing Baby 33
Burial Instructions—Abject & Fuming 34
Concerning My Lover, the Ogerhunch 35
To My Lover, concerning the Shaking of the Bladder Rattle at the
Maid’s Baby 36
To the Rumor-Monger amongst Us 37
Happy Little Death Threats 38
To My Lover, Phrenology Hobbyist 39
To My Lover, about His Bouffage Eating of Meats 40
To My Lover, about His Derelict Neglect of the Gate-Lock 41
To My Lover, concerning a Cure for Barn Swallow Mites 42
To My Lover, My ’Klept 43
To My Lover, His Hair Thick with Bear Grease 44
For My Lover, upon My Impending Death 46
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The Practice of Being a Lamb 49
Jesus Wants to Explain the Body to His Father 50
Jesus Explain[s] His Father 52
Mary Magdalene and the Lost Body 54
Of Poor Spirit 55
In Rooms with Baby 56
Aquarium: Love Poem #1 57
Aquarium: Love Poem #2 58
Today, There Is No Time, Only Squalling Squalor 59
Don’t Take Up with the Married Man 60
If You Do Not Eat Enough Omega-3 while Pregnant, the Baby Will
Steal It from Your Brain 61
I Prefer the Earlier You—Dear Reader 62
On the Masochistic Need for Criticism 63
For the Blind Botanist’s Wife 64
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Today, You Leave Me to Go to the Store, but I’m Sure You Won’t
Come Back 65
Today—Hauling a Family on My Back—I Think of Fitzgerald’s
Exquisite Crack-Up: A Resistant Sonetto 67
Interviewers Ask How I Do It 70
As Men Relinquish Their Manliness 71
America—Let Me Be Your Gravedigger: A Disfigured Sonetto 72
When the Girl Becomes the Bear 73
Acknowledgments 75
