First Edition

      Published by Red Hen Press

       www.redhen.org

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Many thanks to the editors of the following publications in which these poems first appeared:

      27 Views of Asheville (anthology), “Et in Arcadia Ego”; American Journal of Poetry, “Baby Boomers”; American Literary Review, “Caravaggio’s Carnal Gospel,” “The Agnostic”; Asheville Citizen-Times, “Coffin Not Included”; Best of the Fuquay-Varina Series (anthology), “A Girl Like That,” “This Rock is Gonna Roll”; Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (anthology), “The Invisible Bridge”; Black Renaissance Noire, “Gaslight: Inauguration Day,” “Look For Me In Liberia,” “Louis and The Wolf,” “The House of Dance and Feathers” ; Bluestem, “The Bookmobile,” “Thoughts on Easter While Digging a Grave”; Cave Wall, “The Silver Surfer”; Cimarron Review, “Blue Mountain Panorama,” “Like A Buddha, Paul Motian Says,” “The Glory Façade” “The Mountain That Eats Men,” “Wall Street”; Colorado Review, “Le Papillon,” “The Exile,” “Writer’s Block”; Comstock Review, “Robert Johnson’s Milk Cow Blues,” “Snow is ghostly . . . ,” “The Hidden Life of Ants”; Confluence: Far From the Centers of Ambition (anthology), “The Kick of Infinity: Paradoxical Architecture”; Cutthroat: Truth to Power (anthology), “Democracy”; Ecotone, “The Force of Compassion”; Enchanted Voices Literary Review (India), “Nostalgia as Entropy”; Five Points, “Glenn Gould in Carnegie Hall, 1962,” “Like a Buddha, Paul Motian Says”; The Freeman, “The Searchers”; Hampden-Sydney Review, “Villon”; Hunger Mountain, “Stylish Violence”; Iodine Poetry Journal, “Prayer,” “The Skin of Meaning,” “World Boogie”; James Dickey Review, “Context,” “Dear Reader”; Minnesota Review, “Louis and the Wolf”; North Carolina Conversations, “The Exile”; Plume, “Putting,” “The Long Black Road,” “Tranquility & Tremolo,” “Salvador”; Poems and Plays, “Ceremony”; Poetry East, “Great Blue Heron”; Poetry in Plain Sight, “Great Blue Heron,” “Robert Johnson’s Milk Cow Blues,” “Snow is ghostly . . . ,” “Why Pluto Is No Longer a Planet”; Poets Respond to Race (anthology), “Look for Me in Liberia”; Portland Review, “Jack Spicer,” “Running with the Bulls”; Red Truck Review, “Broken into Light,” “Love Among Cannibals”; Shenandoah, “Portrait of the Artist as a Spark”; and Southern Poetry Anthology, “Nostalgia as Entropy,” “The Silver Surfer”.

       For Denise

       the bravest person I have ever known whose skin is my own

       CONTENTS

       ETYMOLOGIES

       The Skin of Meaning

       Why Pluto Is No Longer a Planet

       Et in Arcadia Ego

       The Force of Compassion

       The House of Dance and Feathers

       Prayer

       The Glory Façade

       The Exile

       The Bookmobile

       Retail

       Putting