Worrisome Creatures

Table of Contents

Startle 1

*

Totem 5
Ode to My Unfriendly Neighbor 6
On the Feast of the Assumption 7
Mockingbird 8
At the Obstetrician's Office 9
Birthday 10
Estuary 11
Postpartum 12
Meg Francis 13
Dreaming of Exes 15
Brief Observations of Self, Age 25 16
Nerve 17
Four O'Clock Makes Me Want to Kill You 18
On Hearing an Old Friend Works

in the Mass General Burn Unit 19
Epithalamium 20
All Creatures, Great and Small 21
Joselyn, in Trump's America 22

*

Birthday Poem for My Mother 27
Halloween 28
The Grief Orchard 29
Last Vacation with My Mother 30
Why My Grandmother Reminds Me of Sylvia Plath 31
Mistaken 32
Reverse Death 33
Family History 34
When I Try to Talk about You 35
Escalation 36

*

Before Moving to Florida 39
Three Carrotwoods 40
Sharks 41
Stingray 42
The Fiesta Queen, or a Brief History of Florida 43
Kafka in the Everglades 44
Masquerading 45
The Map Room Bar (Bucktown, Chicago) 46
To Bartolomé García de Nodal,

Captain of the Atocha, September 4, 1622 47
The Statue of Christopher Columbus, Tampa Theatre 48
The Professor 49
Swell 50
Ballad of the Bear King, South Alabama 51

*

Advice for a Young Son in April 55
For Ryan, in Oregon 56
Death of the Hired Hand, Hiawatha, Kansas 57

Topeka Boys 58
Tongue 59
An Education in Steel, Cleveland 1969 60
Gas Station Augury, Port Clinton, Ohio 61
To Skin a Rabbit 62
Natural Selection 64
Two-Year Drought 65

About the Poet 67